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Darwin Awards 2006
ms1234 writes "The year is coming to and end so it is time to see how our genepool is doing. Darwin Awards 2006 includes everything from whacking RPGs with hammers to recreating experiments by Franklin."
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A friend of mine, who steadfastly refuses to read instructions, was assembling his new wet saw (used for cutting ceramic tile)), when I arrived at his house to help install the tile. A wet saw usually has a diamond coated blade similar to a circular saw (but without teeth), and a water reservoir and pump to cool the blade. The pump obviously has an electric cord, which is usually routed by or through the water reservoir.
Because he hadn't read the directions he had routed the pump's electric cord IN FRONT OF THE SAW BLADE, and it would have been cut in two and dropped into the water pan when he started up the saw. What's more, he had it plugged into a 30-amp circuit. Luckily for him, I saw how he had put the saw together before he fired it up.
The scary thing? He still won't read the instructions.
Well, the paster story was in various newspapers. Maybe the guy on the train yelled, "Oh shit, I missed my stop!" As for the electrician, I know a very good one with over 30 yrs experience, who whole-heartedly believes its possible to create dynamos (he believes that if you power something, such as a car, with a battery and use said device to recharge the battery, it will run forever).
Anonymous Cowards suck.
So why isn't Christine Boskoff going to be the clear winner for a Darwin Award? The person might have been extremely intelligent, but what can one say about a plan to climb remote mountains in China with only one companion and no method of communication to the outside world for weeks? As the Christine Boskoff Wikipedia article notes, she did not even leave word of where she was going so that potential rescue teams would have no idea where to find her.
So why is it funny when probably uneducated people do something stupid while it isn't funny for someone who used to be an "electrical engineer working for Lockheed Aeronautical in Georgia", "a pilot", and who "designed software for a lighted control display for the C-130J" to do something equally stupid to eliminate herself from the gene pool? Articles I have read such as the above article from 2002 indicate she had no children, so Christine Boskoff removed herself from the gene pool through her stupid actions. Evidently being a former electrical engineer and then becoming a mountain climber/entrepreneur is something that Darwinian evolution selects against. (Even her former husband killed himself in 1999.) So why aren't we all laughing at that?
The one about the pastor who couldn't walk on water is either particularly hard to believe, or else it is leaving out the most critical/entertaining part of the story.
When I imagine someone trying to walk across a river, the picture that comes to mind is that the fool steps into the river and notices that his feet are wet. Then he takes a few more steps and notices that he's up to his thighs in water. At this point, he's neither dead nor still under the illusion he can walk on water.
So what happened? Did he, having lost face, decide to continue into the water and drown himself? Or did he begin his water walking in a deep part (e.g. take the ferry halfway into the river and try walking from there?). Or did he successfully walk on water until he got to the deep part, then realize how impossible it was and suddenly suffer a loss of faith and fall through the surface? ;-) Or is the story just bullshit?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
No point in arguing, but I will clarify. For the "modern medicine", I'm not speaking of the sick and weak but more specifically dealing with the people that do dumb things that result in shooting themselves in the face or drinking themselves to oblivion and then being fixed up in the hospital. Same goes with smokers (disclaimer: both my parents smoke and my grandmother passed from lung cancer two years ago)...people smoke knowing it's going to kill them sooner than they would naturally die yet they do it and then the hospitals and keep them living, allowing the smokers to not only fill their own lungs with a cancerous death but also those non-smokers around them.
"Current laws"...one could argue helmet laws. Other laws that diminish our intelligence are all the disclaimers we have to put on everything now. "Do not stick fork in eye", "coffee is hot", etc. If someone doesn't have the common sense not to stick their hand in a blender while it is on, they probably should learn a lesson one way or the other.
I by no means want people to get hurt. It just pains me to see common sense going down the drain...and the people with lack of common sense being "rewarded" with lawsuits that pay them for their lack of common sense.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
You forget that soldiers always convcieve children before they go to war. since most soldiers don't die yet still follow the reproduce-before-deployment rule they actually increase their representation in the gene pool. Why would you make killing your profession (with the risk of being killed) if it wasn't to make room for your genes.
Yes, which is why I said *electric*. By the way, he also believes that if you had a boat with two powerful magnets as opposites ends, it would move without need for power. I cannot convince him that since since they are physically connected (by the boat), that they form a closed system and would not move the boat.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
I imagine that as a non-smoker, smoking annoys you. Fine. Your pretentious self-righteous rhetoric annoys me, but the First Amendment states you have your say. You want to gripe about the evils of second-hand smoke. Fine. I'm not arguing the simple fact that inhaling fine particulate matter isn't healthy. I've lost family to cancer. I've also had 80-year old grandmothers that smoke daily, and get around better than someone half their age. It's a risky individual choice that may not be seen as "proper" {like face-piercing, tongue- or penis-splitting, etc,] but I'll be damned if I'll listen to some pink-lunged ninny lecture me on my life choices. I'll leave you with a thought:
I live in San Antonio, and a little while back we were about to lose some federal funds due to some smog. Well, the local politicos all hit the air, and the suggestions ran from car-pooling to taking the bus to switching to electric mowers and only mowing on certain days, etc. In every smog scenario I'd heard, cars and industry were the problem. Well, riddle me this: Why weren't smokers included?
[BTW, a lame "well, because they knew smokers wouldn't quit smoking" WILL be countered with "..and die-hard yuppies will NOT give up their H3s," so PLEASE choose another line.]
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
You are missing a crucial aspect of Darwinism if you quote, "Only the strong survive".
The species is lost if there is only one survivor; or even two, three, etc.
The full implication of Darwinism is best captured by, "From a diverse pool of candidates, only the strong thrive."
Right now the effect of current law and modern medicine is to increase the diversity of our gene pool. We now have untold genetic richness what with decreasing disease and infant mortality and high levels of inter-racial mixing. When (not if) a catastrophe occurs we will have a sufficiently rich gene pool to survive such a catastrophe.
Such as, for example, an airborne AIDs epidemic. Until it happens no one (not even you) can predict which gene sequences and which individuals will survive. That is why it is good for as many people to exist before such an event occurs.
GPL Deconstructed
One thing I've always wondered is how darwinawards.com became the defacto source. The Darwin Awards were started long before that site came to exist and yet there's a movie called The Darwin Awards to which the rights were licensed by darwinawards.com. The name was in use before that site got started, so it shouldn't be a trademark issue. The stories are all based around ones which are covered by various media sources, so it shouldn't be a copyright issue. Why should someone producing a movie have to license the rights for what is effectively a community concept? It's like an anonymous coward licensing the rights to "F1RST PSOT!!!" to a movie studio.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Not to defend smokers (I hate their vile habit as well), but smoking usually doesn't kill you until AFTER you've had ample opportunity to reproduce. Your existence demonstrates one example of this. So, it's not exactly a "selected-against" trait.
Darwinism is about surviving just long enough to replicate and ensuring that your children live long enough such that they too can replicate.
It has nothing to do with intelligence, morality or whatever other human attribute you may want to attribute to it.