Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the i-don't-wanna-be-a-candidate dept.
cmuncey writes "Salon has two articles about those perennial geek favorites, the Darwin Awards. This includes an interview with "Darwin" and their current favorites from the winners and nominees. (The official site is here.) Any nominations that they have missed? "
The guy who tried to get a first post and tripped over the cables connecting his monitor and knocked himself out when the monitor fell on him, and then he, uh, became impotent due to a bizarre cat-related event straight afterwards.
I always thought that this particular exercise was a pretty funny idea. I was able to enjoy it primarily because I DID think that they were all fabricated (I still believe that many are). However, two years ago I was sharing it with one of my friends who I knew was from one of the towns mentioned (Woodbridge, VA, site of the death of a young man who liked to dig pits on the beach and sit in them)and, to my surprise, it was a good friend of his. I guess that the deaths are still humorous to some, but after seeing that these are actual deaths that are being laughed at, they have lost all their comic appeal to me...
They aren't necessarily morons, just people who suffered a monumnental lapse of judgement. Usually it is because they're drunk, often because they are young, sometimes because they spend too much time around dangerous things like explosives or machine tools and let their guard down.
If the Darwin awards have any redeeming social value, its to remind people that they are mortal.
As you get older and collect your share of knee, back, and other injuries, you'll discover that most of the time when you hurt yourself, it's preceded by a little voice in your head that says "I shouldn't be doing this". Eventually, you learn to listen to that voice and wear those safety classes, clamp that piece of work, to climb down and move the ladder a little more often while your painting your house.
The guy who got himself wrapped around a car's drive shaft wasn't doing anything more dangerous than a lot of weekend mechanics do. It's just as stupid to get yourself crushed because you didn't chock your car wheels well enough bit happens often enough.
-- Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
OK Blantant Troll (I guess)
by
GW+Hayduke
·
· Score: 2
My vote goes for the millions of "intelligent" IS types who were inexplicibly suffocated this weekend when they tried pulling their feet out of their mouths when their heads were all ready firmly lodged in their posterior regions
That's what I am. This horrible, senseless celebration of death shouldn't be allowed.
There. I've said it, so no-one else needs to. So let's get on with the business of laughing at morons.
My own personal favourite will always be actor Jon Erik Hexum (sp?), who shot himself in the head with a blank, cunningly forgetting that blanks are lethal up to a few metres. He was starring in some godawful series about models and spies at the time; the title escapes me but I still wake up screaming when the dialogue haunts my dreams.
However, as a way to go I reckon autoerotic asphyxiation has yet to be beaten (so to speak). What better way to be remembered than with your eyes bulging, and your tongue and your dick hanging out?
Do they have a special category for suicides ?
by
Forge
·
· Score: 2
Here is the sequence of events. The guy started by shooting himself through the head with a fish gun The spear went in one ear and out the next ( literally ) and he was delivered to the hospital with this 4 foot steal rod about half way through his head.
While he was in hospital "recovering" he was discovered missing from his bed and the nurse just managed to catch him on his way out the window.
He was tied to the bed after that which wouldn't have been a problem if he didn't keep trying to lodge food in his throat. I.e. He would swallow a piece of dumpling until it blocked his windpipe and then sit there and tried to pretend everything was fine until he started to turn blue.
And yes this really happened. I got it from the officer who investigated the case and the one who was stationed at his bedside. Too bad I don't know what became of him afterwards. Although 4 butched suicides in one day speaks volumes:)
-- --=
Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Re:I used to laugh -- me too
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3
A while ago, a friend on the net said that a friend of theirs had died. They recounted the tale, which was awful. Shortly after, I saw a chewed-up version of this circulating on the Darwin nominees list that someone forwarded to me. That's the first time I realised that at least some of the stories were at least partly true. Previously I'd just thought that giggling at urban legends was a bit pathetic. Since this time I knew what the friends were putting up with (prurient media interest and police interest at a time when they had just lost a friend) I didn't find it remotely funny. I realise that much humour is derived from slapstick and pratfalls, but I just don't like it. I don't watch the shows on TV which have home videos of people doing stupid things for the same reason.
Someone is going to tell me to 'lighten up' now. This being Slashdot, it will be put less politely. But when you laugh at this lot, bear in mind that half of them were done whilst drunk (have you never done something life-threatening when drunk yourself? It might be you next time...) and all of them involve people who had relatives and friends who had thousands of people laughing whilst they dealt with someone's death. Of course, this is Slashdot, where the discussion of one person's death became the subject most riddled with the most appalling comments, so I suppose it's fit fodder for here. Go ahead and laugh. My friend lost a friend.
I realise that the post is probably a troll. With that in mind, I'm still going to reply.:)
Do you think being blind to that which God has created and set in motion is faith? To deny the existance of evolution and natural selection is to deny one of the most grand parts of God's creation. If anyone has been misled, it is you; for you have thrown out those things that are clearly evidenced in the world that God created. God wants you to have faith, but God certainly does not want one to dismiss what they can see and feel. Do you not believe that God is capable of creating a system where the most desirable traits are passed on and emphasised, and the least desirable are phased out?
It is my belief that this particular Anonymous Coward is a member of the Kansas Board of Education.:)
o/~ So tonight we're gonna party like it's 1699! o/~
I was disappointed to find out that a couple of my favorites are in fact urban legend. The JATO rocket story is unconfirmed and the story of the two guys at the Metallica concert has been assigned "Urban Legend" status. Rats.
I guess I should be uplifted (instead of bummed) that these are fiction, not fact. But I continue to believe that people are stoopid enought to do that - it's just that this time fiction got there first.
-- Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
I think I actually WANT a Darwin Award - at least my death would've made someone laugh, and that's valuable. I shall henceforth stick my fingers into as many electric sockets, play with as much traffic, and use as many Microsoft products as I can find. Chris Worth
My all time favorite Stupidity Award (non-fatal) nomination was one that happenend near here in Ceres, CA in the early 90's. Custodians at a elementary school there caught a gopher that had been causing problems. (No, now that you ask, none of them looked like Bill Murray.) Their problem was what to do to get rid of it.
You see they didn't want to stand around whacking it with shovels while the kids watched. So, being the mental giants they were, they put the animal in a bucket, and took it to a storage room. There they decided to gas/freeze it to death using a spray for freezing chewing gum on sidewalks so it can be chipped off. They closed the metal door behind them and started spraying into the bucket. Unfortunately they also decided to do something else (in the interests of sound time management, of course) they couldn't do in front of the kids.
They lit up some cigarettes.
Well, that got a response. If they had bothered to read the labels, they would have known that the propellant (good name in this case) in the spray cans was quite flammable. Maybe propane. The resulting detonation blew the door completely off its hinges, and put the custodians in the hospital for a day.
Oh, and the gopher? According to the Modesto Bee, witnesses stated that the animal not only survivied the incident, but was last seen crossing the road in front of the school, trying to get away at a high rate of speed. Smart move.
As the Salon story may mention, the JATO Impala urban legend is the all time most popular (and most submitted) Darwin Award story. There is a great, if long, story here by someone who claims to have started the story. I have rarely laughed so hard.
When I lived near the railroad tracks in Washington D.C., several kids became living (?) examples of Ohm's law when they decided to play on top of some railroad cars, directly underneath the 14 KV power lines that are used to power electric locomotives.
At my previous residence, elevator surfing was a popular fad until one of the little moppets made the fatal discovery that you shouldn't put your body in between the cab and the wall of the shaft.
-- Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Darwin awards going downhill
by
Frank+Sullivan
·
· Score: 5
I just got the awards in my mail this morning, and couldn't believe it... the first runner-up is *still alive*!!! Worse, his genitalia are still intact, and he might still breed (he only blew his face off with the blasting cap in his mouth). That, my friends, is unworthy of a Darwin Award.
Way back when they first started, nominees actually had to die in order to be considered. A few years later, they added the "honorable mention" category for those who merely maimed themselves. But this year, they seem to be handing out full nominations for mere stupidity... i saw nominations this year that involved no bodily harm whatsoever! (like the guy who tried to steal the letters from the board for his mug shots)
I really hope the Darwin Awards staff will reconsider their methodology and return to their previous high standards, lest they become another Golden Globe, or worse yet, America's Funniest Home Videos.
--- 120 chars is barely sufficient
-- Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Try the REAL Darwin List!
by
Tackhead
·
· Score: 5
If you enjoyed the site referenced in the Salon article, try the real McCoy. The Cult of Father Darwin Mailing List has been around for a good many years, and we love a good culling.
Clueless twits with the "FAQs are for pussies" gene need not apply. Before signing on, for the love of Uncle Chuck, please read The CoFD FAQ.
(On second thought, don't bother. We love flaming helminthic parasites who can't read FAQs into smoldering piles of ash...)
I can assure you that, unlike www.darwinawards.com , the CoFD has never, and will never pull any punches when it comes to "sensitive" deaths. Hell, we had a fsckin' field day over the "don't wear a seatbelt and let your chauffeur drive drunk" gene (ex-Princess Die), the "trees are your friends" gene (Sonny Bono, $DEADKENNEDY), and the "Hey, I can fly in this fog" gene ($DEADKENNEDY, closely related to "Hey, I can drive" gene posessed by yet another $DEADKENNEDY).
For Y2K, I personally celebrated by laughing heartily at news footage of some dumb bloke in California standing up on a light pole and reaching up to grab a couple of nearby wires for support. Presumably, he had the "electrical safety is for pussies" gene. Darwin be Praised, he fell down and went boom (actually, "zzap-thud" was more like it) shortly afterwards. Verily, I could almost hear the Voice of Darwin echoing in the Y2K crowd. YOU. Yes, YOU, on the streetlight. Outa the gene pool. NOW.
For any who object - I quote the final lines of the CoFD FAQ:
"Finally? There is no finally, for Evolution, under the guiding hand of the Father continues ever on; you can but stave off the inevitable for a few decades, but eventually your time will come and you will die.
It is up to you to determine if your genetic line will be found Worthy, or whether you will become a statistic in some journalist's copysheet and a scorned entry in this list.
Go forth and multiply."
Trainsurfing ("Choose death...")
by
acb
·
· Score: 3
Many years ago, there was an incident in Melbourne, Australia, in which a teenager eliminated himself from the gene pool in a similar fashion. He was a member of a graffiti gang, who snuck into train yards to do aerosol art/vandalise trains; on the side, they would do all sorts of other train-related tricks, such as lever open the doors of moving trains and climb onto the roof.
Now this guy, apparently having smoked a little too much dope, decided that it would be really cool to go surfing in the City Loop (the underground section of the Melbourne train system, running under the city centre). He did not count on the height of the tunnel abruptly decreasing ahead of him. He hit a wall of concrete face first at something like 60km/h. Apparently he died some hours later in hospital.
There were memorial aerosol-art murals to him all over the Melbourne train system for several years. Guess they didn't have Darwin Awards back then...
Fictional from Clerks
by
Carnage4Life
·
· Score: 2
I know these are fictional but these two from the movie Clerks always crack me up. I guess their funny because they seem like the kind of stories that are true but no one wants to fess up to.
The old guy who had a heart attack while masturbrating in the restroom of a convenience store with a borrowed porn mag.
The guy who broke his neck trying to give himself a blowjob.
From what I remember if you submit a story to them it has to be written up in atleast one newspaper, or have some other kind of validation. If I were able to get through to there site right now I'd check on their guidelines, I'm sure they are on there. Either way, there are certain guidelines to getting a Darwin award, ie. it must have happened / be true
The fatal flaw with the Darwin Awards is obvious to anyone who has read The Selfish Gene (or is otherwise familiar with genetics).
They don't remove themselves from the gene pool, if they have already reproduced. Hell, if they orphan their children, then someone else has to take care of their offspring. They're ahead.
I agree, the comment about the guys with the land mine who their wives couldn't find the pieces of made me realize: "Oh, no, they may have already reproduced!"
One of the problem with safety precautions is that they let the unsafe and dangerous amongst us continue to live.
-- Will in Seattle
Re:BASE Jumping off of El Capitan
by
Pfhreakaz0id
·
· Score: 2
Yeah. I remember reading that. Incidentally, it was a protest, so they new they would have to surrender their equipment, so she didn't take her reserve chute (didn't want to give it up). Course, I wouldn't think you would have much time to use a reserve on a BASE jump. The woman was 60 plus years old and had done a ton of jumps.
He could still make himself eligable!
by
FreeUser
·
· Score: 2
He would only be eligable if he were to have subsequently removed his genitalia (local anesthesia not required), recognizing that any furtherance of his genetic lineage would be a disservice to the species as a whole.
Contrary to popular myth, you can survive an act of collassal stupidity and be eligable for the darwin awards, provided you are no longer capable of pro-creating.
Yes, but the stories are embellished. I live in College Station, TX and attend Texas A&M University. We have a tradition of building and burning a bonfire every year, and this year it fell, killing and harming several of us. The story got to Darwin and they put it on the site, however it was grossly exaggerated and thrown well out of context. Not only that, but they flat out lied about some things, in order to make the story more amusing. Now I've always thought the Darwin Awards were funny, but if our situation is any indication, their complete exaggeration of truly horrible events in order to get some laughs is simply not laughable.
Re:BASE Jumping off of El Capitan
by
Invicta{HOG}
·
· Score: 2
As far as I remember, the protest was, in fact, against the park service banning BASE jumping. She was trying to prove that it was so safe that even a 60 year old woman could do it...tragic.
... has to go to the scientists who have developed an infertility technique that may help some infertile men to father children. This could "help childhood cancer survivors to become fathers".
Sorry to seem heartless about this, but doesn't this mean the gene for childhood cancer stays in the gene-pool? Is this a Good Idea?
JFK Jr. He dies because of his own stupidity. He didn't have the necessary amount of experience to pilot a plane under the conditions of when he crashed.
I believe that he was intentionally left out because of who he was. His act was one of blatent and stinging stupidity and he should get a Darwin award for it.
LK
-- "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Re:Death from a great height - by a lawyer
by
WillAffleck
·
· Score: 2
There should have been bonus points for his death, due to his status as a lawyer.
Darwin + Lawyer = +5 points on Darwin scale
-- Will in Seattle
Well, at least your friend took a risk
by
WillAffleck
·
· Score: 2
Seriously, I live in Wuss City, formerly known as Seattle. As the "Darwin" awarder said, there might be some uses for risk-taking genes - and there are cases of people where they both have them (Paul Schell and the WTO) and then chicken out (Paul Schell and the No New Years At The Space Needle).
In my time in the military (ok, so you all don't believe that some of us do stupid things like that) I've seen MANY examples of pre-Darwin behaviour. Like playing with loaded guns, drinking large quantities of vodka before messing with explosives (including anti-personnel mines and tank mines), grabbing an M-90 one minute after it "didn't go off" (it then went off - just before his hand got it - and good thing he had thick glasses or he'd be blind).
Still, from a genetic point of view - they all "deserved to die". A lot of people take stupid risks like that and live - most of them shouldn't. And, most of the time, alcohol or other drugs are involved.
Oh, C'mon, any Aggie has got to have done at least two things that almost made him/her eligible for the Darwin Awards!
After all, if not, they can't be Aggies!
And, no, I didn't go to UTA... but I used to belong to the Texas Folklore Society and I remember many a tale of an Aggie that just missed the Golden Darwin ring by a hair...
-- Will in Seattle
Darwin shows year "100"
by
coyote-san
·
· Score: 2
In my opinion, the funniest thing on the Darwin site is the date shown on the "pending" items. The web site correctly shows "01/01/00", but subsequent dates are set 1900 years earlier: "01/02/100" and "01/03/100".
ROTFL
-- For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Slashdot Mirror
The guy who tried to get a first post and tripped over the cables connecting his monitor and knocked himself out when the monitor fell on him, and then he, uh, became impotent due to a bizarre cat-related event straight afterwards.
I remember this one time, at band camp, a guy fell into a tuba full of pudding and died of hypothermia.
-----
Invicta{HOG}
My vote goes for the millions of "intelligent" IS types who were inexplicibly suffocated this weekend when they tried pulling their feet out of their mouths when their heads were all ready firmly lodged in their posterior regions
yeah yeah moderate me down to non-existance
-- Life: Hate the Game... Love the cereal
That's what I am. This horrible, senseless celebration of death shouldn't be allowed.
There. I've said it, so no-one else needs to. So let's get on with the business of laughing at morons.
My own personal favourite will always be actor Jon Erik Hexum (sp?), who shot himself in the head with a blank, cunningly forgetting that blanks are lethal up to a few metres. He was starring in some godawful series about models and spies at the time; the title escapes me but I still wake up screaming when the dialogue haunts my dreams.
However, as a way to go I reckon autoerotic asphyxiation has yet to be beaten (so to speak). What better way to be remembered than with your eyes bulging, and your tongue and your dick hanging out?
Here is the sequence of events. The guy started by shooting himself through the head with a fish gun The spear went in one ear and out the next ( literally ) and he was delivered to the hospital with this 4 foot steal rod about half way through his head.
:)
While he was in hospital "recovering" he was discovered missing from his bed and the nurse just managed to catch him on his way out the window.
He was tied to the bed after that which wouldn't have been a problem if he didn't keep trying to lodge food in his throat. I.e. He would swallow a piece of dumpling until it blocked his windpipe and then sit there and tried to pretend everything was fine until he started to turn blue.
And yes this really happened. I got it from the officer who investigated the case and the one who was stationed at his bedside. Too bad I don't know what became of him afterwards. Although 4 butched suicides in one day speaks volumes
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Someone is going to tell me to 'lighten up' now. This being Slashdot, it will be put less politely. But when you laugh at this lot, bear in mind that half of them were done whilst drunk (have you never done something life-threatening when drunk yourself? It might be you next time...) and all of them involve people who had relatives and friends who had thousands of people laughing whilst they dealt with someone's death. Of course, this is Slashdot, where the discussion of one person's death became the subject most riddled with the most appalling comments, so I suppose it's fit fodder for here. Go ahead and laugh. My friend lost a friend.
Do you think being blind to that which God has created and set in motion is faith? To deny the existance of evolution and natural selection is to deny one of the most grand parts of God's creation. If anyone has been misled, it is you; for you have thrown out those things that are clearly evidenced in the world that God created. God wants you to have faith, but God certainly does not want one to dismiss what they can see and feel. Do you not believe that God is capable of creating a system where the most desirable traits are passed on and emphasised, and the least desirable are phased out?
It is my belief that this particular Anonymous Coward is a member of the Kansas Board of Education. :)
o/~ So tonight we're gonna party like it's 1699! o/~
--
Intelligence is definitely a recessive trait.
"being ridiculous doesn't kill" -- too bad it's true for ACs.
I was disappointed to find out that a couple of my favorites are in fact urban legend. The JATO rocket story is unconfirmed and the story of the two guys at the Metallica concert has been assigned "Urban Legend" status. Rats.
I guess I should be uplifted (instead of bummed) that these are fiction, not fact. But I continue to believe that people are stoopid enought to do that - it's just that this time fiction got there first.
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
I think I actually WANT a Darwin Award - at least my death would've made someone laugh, and that's valuable. I shall henceforth stick my fingers into as many electric sockets, play with as much traffic, and use as many Microsoft products as I can find.
Chris Worth
- Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
You see they didn't want to stand around whacking it with shovels while the kids watched. So, being the mental giants they were, they put the animal in a bucket, and took it to a storage room. There they decided to gas/freeze it to death using a spray for freezing chewing gum on sidewalks so it can be chipped off. They closed the metal door behind them and started spraying into the bucket. Unfortunately they also decided to do something else (in the interests of sound time management, of course) they couldn't do in front of the kids.
They lit up some cigarettes.
Well, that got a response. If they had bothered to read the labels, they would have known that the propellant (good name in this case) in the spray cans was quite flammable. Maybe propane. The resulting detonation blew the door completely off its hinges, and put the custodians in the hospital for a day.
Oh, and the gopher? According to the Modesto Bee, witnesses stated that the animal not only survivied the incident, but was last seen crossing the road in front of the school, trying to get away at a high rate of speed. Smart move.
As the Salon story may mention, the JATO Impala urban legend is the all time most popular (and most submitted) Darwin Award story. There is a great, if long, story here by someone who claims to have started the story. I have rarely laughed so hard.
At my previous residence, elevator surfing was a popular fad until one of the little moppets made the fatal discovery that you shouldn't put your body in between the cab and the wall of the shaft.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I just got the awards in my mail this morning, and couldn't believe it... the first runner-up is *still alive*!!! Worse, his genitalia are still intact, and he might still breed (he only blew his face off with the blasting cap in his mouth). That, my friends, is unworthy of a Darwin Award.
Way back when they first started, nominees actually had to die in order to be considered. A few years later, they added the "honorable mention" category for those who merely maimed themselves. But this year, they seem to be handing out full nominations for mere stupidity... i saw nominations this year that involved no bodily harm whatsoever! (like the guy who tried to steal the letters from the board for his mug shots)
I really hope the Darwin Awards staff will reconsider their methodology and return to their previous high standards, lest they become another Golden Globe, or worse yet, America's Funniest Home Videos.
---
120
chars is barely sufficient
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
Clueless twits with the "FAQs are for pussies" gene need not apply. Before signing on, for the love of Uncle Chuck, please read The CoFD FAQ.
(On second thought, don't bother. We love flaming helminthic parasites who can't read FAQs into smoldering piles of ash...)
I can assure you that, unlike www.darwinawards.com , the CoFD has never, and will never pull any punches when it comes to "sensitive" deaths. Hell, we had a fsckin' field day over the "don't wear a seatbelt and let your chauffeur drive drunk" gene (ex-Princess Die), the "trees are your friends" gene (Sonny Bono, $DEADKENNEDY), and the "Hey, I can fly in this fog" gene ($DEADKENNEDY, closely related to "Hey, I can drive" gene posessed by yet another $DEADKENNEDY).
For Y2K, I personally celebrated by laughing heartily at news footage of some dumb bloke in California standing up on a light pole and reaching up to grab a couple of nearby wires for support. Presumably, he had the "electrical safety is for pussies" gene. Darwin be Praised, he fell down and went boom (actually, "zzap-thud" was more like it) shortly afterwards. Verily, I could almost hear the Voice of Darwin echoing in the Y2K crowd. YOU. Yes, YOU, on the streetlight. Outa the gene pool. NOW.
For any who object - I quote the final lines of the CoFD FAQ:
Many years ago, there was an incident in Melbourne, Australia, in which a teenager eliminated himself from the gene pool in a similar fashion. He was a member of a graffiti gang, who snuck into train yards to do aerosol art/vandalise trains; on the side, they would do all sorts of other train-related tricks, such as lever open the doors of moving trains and climb onto the roof.
Now this guy, apparently having smoked a little too much dope, decided that it would be really cool to go surfing in the City Loop (the underground section of the Melbourne train system, running under the city centre). He did not count on the height of the tunnel abruptly decreasing ahead of him. He hit a wall of concrete face first at something like 60km/h. Apparently he died some hours later in hospital.
There were memorial aerosol-art murals to him all over the Melbourne train system for several years. Guess they didn't have Darwin Awards back then...
From what I remember if you submit a story to them it has to be written up in atleast one newspaper, or have some other kind of validation. If I were able to get through to there site right now I'd check on their guidelines, I'm sure they are on there. Either way, there are certain guidelines to getting a Darwin award, ie. it must have happened / be true
The fatal flaw with the Darwin Awards is obvious to anyone who has read The Selfish Gene (or is otherwise familiar with genetics).
They don't remove themselves from the gene pool, if they have already reproduced. Hell, if they orphan their children, then someone else has to take care of their offspring. They're ahead.
--
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
Yeah. I remember reading that. Incidentally, it was a protest, so they new they would have to surrender their equipment, so she didn't take her reserve chute (didn't want to give it up). Course, I wouldn't think you would have much time to use a reserve on a BASE jump. The woman was 60 plus years old and had done a ton of jumps.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
He would only be eligable if he were to have subsequently removed his genitalia (local anesthesia not required), recognizing that any furtherance of his genetic lineage would be a disservice to the species as a whole.
Contrary to popular myth, you can survive an act of collassal stupidity and be eligable for the darwin awards, provided you are no longer capable of pro-creating.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Yes, but the stories are embellished. I live in College Station, TX and attend Texas A&M University. We have a tradition of building and burning a bonfire every year, and this year it fell, killing and harming several of us. The story got to Darwin and they put it on the site, however it was grossly exaggerated and thrown well out of context. Not only that, but they flat out lied about some things, in order to make the story more amusing.
Now I've always thought the Darwin Awards were funny, but if our situation is any indication, their complete exaggeration of truly horrible events in order to get some laughs is simply not laughable.
As far as I remember, the protest was, in fact, against the park service banning BASE jumping. She was trying to prove that it was so safe that even a 60 year old woman could do it...tragic.
Sorry to seem heartless about this, but doesn't this mean the gene for childhood cancer stays in the gene-pool? Is this a Good Idea?
Regards, Ralph.
JFK Jr. He dies because of his own stupidity. He didn't have the necessary amount of experience to pilot a plane under the conditions of when he crashed.
I believe that he was intentionally left out because of who he was. His act was one of blatent and stinging stupidity and he should get a Darwin award for it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There should have been bonus points for his death, due to his status as a lawyer.
Darwin + Lawyer = +5 points on Darwin scale
Will in Seattle
Seriously, I live in Wuss City, formerly known as Seattle. As the "Darwin" awarder said, there might be some uses for risk-taking genes - and there are cases of people where they both have them (Paul Schell and the WTO) and then chicken out (Paul Schell and the No New Years At The Space Needle).
In my time in the military (ok, so you all don't believe that some of us do stupid things like that) I've seen MANY examples of pre-Darwin behaviour. Like playing with loaded guns, drinking large quantities of vodka before messing with explosives (including anti-personnel mines and tank mines), grabbing an M-90 one minute after it "didn't go off" (it then went off - just before his hand got it - and good thing he had thick glasses or he'd be blind).
Still, from a genetic point of view - they all "deserved to die". A lot of people take stupid risks like that and live - most of them shouldn't. And, most of the time, alcohol or other drugs are involved.
Will in Seattle
Oh, C'mon, any Aggie has got to have done at least two things that almost made him/her eligible for the Darwin Awards!
... but I used to belong to the Texas Folklore Society and I remember many a tale of an Aggie that just missed the Golden Darwin ring by a hair ...
After all, if not, they can't be Aggies!
And, no, I didn't go to UTA
Will in Seattle
In my opinion, the funniest thing on the Darwin site is the date shown on the "pending" items. The web site correctly shows "01/01/00", but subsequent dates are set 1900 years earlier: "01/02/100" and "01/03/100".
ROTFL
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken