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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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Are these real events or made up ones, like in previous years?
...although the reaction to some of these should be: "get real".
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
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.
The story you are refering to is on page 36 of my copy. References to eight news sources are given for the story. And the story says nothing of the gun being unloaded. It does say that the man was tryign to pin the snakes head with the butt of the gun to catch it alive.
The book lists stories in four categories, Darwin Awards, Honorable Mentions, Urban Legends, and Personal Accounts. Stories in the first two categories "are known or believed to be true". Urban legends "should be understood as the fables they are". Personal Accounts "are plausible but usually unverified". The also rates each of the first two categories as Confirmed by Darwin, meaning multiple credile sources, or Unconfimred by Darwin, for stories believed to be true but with fewer or unverifialbe sources. (Quotes from pages six and seven of The Darwin Awards.)
SteveM
I can warrant for this one, it happpened 100 metres from my house in Hertfordshire, UK
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Ah yes, Slashdot, the source of news for nerds and stuff that matters.
What would be really nice and noteworthy is if we could actually let Darwinism take its course. You just have to love how current laws and modern medicine continuously allow these people to live in our society, not only endangering themselves but also endangering the rest of society. "Only the strong survive" just isn't applicable anymore.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Agreed. After all, the ability to spell is oh so important when determining someone's intelligence.
"whacking RPGs with hammers.."
Here I am thinking one of my favorite MMOs got nerfed. I need to get out more.
http://wormbrain.com/
They do claim these are true stories. I can attest for at least one of them. The 1996 silly-sad tale of the lawyer jumping against the windows in the skyscraper office where he worked was in many Toronto news sources at the time. Where this event occurred is a very busy area, so there were plenty of witnesses.
It was later that same year when I heard of the Darwin awards, as someone mentioned that this well-known story was nominated.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
On my AS/400 job I wanted to whack RPG with a hammer, too.
I know I'll get flamed but will say it anyway - I think this site is just plain cruel to take the piss out of people who have had severe accidents with fatal results. Especially as things ain't always what they seem, such as the side-splitting hilarious story of Vietnamese bomb-rollers who got blown up. According to TFA they know perfectly well it is dangerous but are forced to do it anyway because they are starving and get a few cents if they can reclaim the scrap metal.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
How can you call yourself badzilla and NOT think the stories are funny ;-)
I have a very good friend who, despite knowing all the reasons why she shouldn't, smokes. This years "Stubbed Out" made an impression. If the effect is to get one person to stop smoking (or doing other really stupid things like igniting gasoline in florescent tubes), they server a valuable social function.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
So, anyways, New Years Eve, there's this guy, right, and, well... let's call him Charles just for the hell of it. Anyway, "Charles", stayed at home on New Years Eve reading Slashdot. He found it so enjoyable that "Charles" continued reading Slashdot every day. After his discovery, Charles never went to any parties, never got drunk, never got laid, never socialized. Charles has been removed from the gene pool. Thanks Slashdot for another Darwin winner!
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?
Is that like letting gravity take its course?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO_Rocket_Car
"the staff of the Darwin Awards decided it was such a funny story to "grandfather" it in and let it keep its award."
cultdeadcow link at the bottom has the most amazing recent version.
u r so rite man !! i tel meh teecha it alla time
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
I lost all respect for the Darwin Awards when they refused to give one to JFK Jr.
Some jackass flying an airplane in conditions that he had not been certified for and kills himself, his wife and his sister-in-law and they call it a "lapse of judgement" not worthy of a Darwin award.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/hert s/4575291.stm
I guess if I couldn't work google, I'd post AC too.
From the Darwin Awards rules page at:
http://darwinawards.com/rules/rules2.html
"Those who participate in extreme sports are not automatically eligible, as they knowingly assume an increased risk of death. They are, in a sense, correctly applying their judgment that the entertainment is worth the risk. However bizarre the sport, an additional misapplication of judgment must be present in order for the deceased to qualify for a Darwin Award."
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Apologies for the civil liberties reference (a hangover from the "Bill of Wrongs" article. Smoking has come up as an issue in both discussions.
;-)
Its quite relevant in this discussion because of the rather direct and extreme effect on the individual who self-ignited. Both self-ignition and self-nomination for a Darwin award are certainly protected civil liberties.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
Saddam's death wasn't suicide, it was an execution. The Darwins are for people who remove THEMSELVES from the gene pool. Saddam fails to qualify on both the self-removal aspect and the gene pool aspect (he did live long enough to breed).
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
Saddam Hussein.
The lesson: when Don Rumsfeld sells you Chemical Weapons precursors to use in gassing domestic political opponents, don't cross him, or he'll FUCK you.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I heard this story at least seven years ago, when I was getting my diving certification. Some idiot spears a Jewfish, gets tangled in the line and is dragged to his watery death. The legend of the idiot Jewfish-er who forgets his knife and common sense on the boat is not by any means new, and this tale has no references. Different from the chain letter how?
Also, from the 'man-tries-to-jump-from-train' story:
"I am 14, and I know for a fact this story is true."
Convincing. Actually, only one of these stories has any references.
This is garbage, as usual. They find a couple of real facts and laugh at the people who died, then make some others up because humanity is just not stupid enough to die in an amusing manner for the legions of misanthropes.
Death and danger are my various breads and various butters.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2 762445&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
I would like to posthumously nominate Matthew Carrington for the Darwin Awards. Apparently, Mr. Carrington thought is was a good idea and worthwhile to chug water while doing calisthenic.
The ultimate irony is this:
The game was a quiz-show type game, where the pledges had to answer questions. If the pledge got the answer wrong, they then had to drink water and do calisthenics. Mr. Carrington got so many questions wrong, that he drank enough water to cause his own death by over-hydration.
Not only wast he stupid enough the participate in such a contest as a requirement to get into a fraternity (a stupid rationale as it is), but he answered so many questions wrong that he had to drink enough water to cause death by over-hydration.
Now there are laws that punish other people for an individuals stupid choices. If he was forced at gunpoint, then it definitely would have not been his fault. But, since he VOLUNTARILY made the choise to participate in the contest, and CONTINUE TO STAY IN THE CONTEST (your body will tell you when you are doing something you shouldn't be doing. To over-hydrate and not know it is baloney)so the HE COULD BE IN A FRATERNITY, is ENTIRELY his fault alone.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
In this age of liability, it seems anyone can be sued for no reason. This is why my dad and I thought of a wonderful idea to prevent companies from being sued for absolutely no reason over people doing ridiculous things. Some doors nowadays even say, "Warning: Door May Open At Any Time." To correct this problem, just slap a sticker on your product that says, "Do Not Use." IANAL, but as far as I can tell, it's as good as any other sticker to prevent you from being sued.
I can't find the exact reference, but they only consider your ability to reproduce after the fact, not whether you actually have before the fact -- because that is hard to track reliably even if everyone's being honest, and you're ignoring stuff like bastard children who think their mother's husband is their father....
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
If you actually bothered to look up the hot coffee case you would find out that the coffee was served at boiling. That's a good case for a lawsuit, being served toxic liquid at a restaurant instead of coffee.
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
I prefer http://newsoftheweird.com/ These are taken from newspapers around the world. When I found the site, I did double check several stories to determine that they were printed in actual newspapers.
One could argue that Christine did demonstrate a further misapplication of judgement, as she told no one where she was going and had only one companion to climb in a remote region of a foreign nation. It wasn't just the extreme sport nature of her death, there were those additional factors which the o.p. pointed out, which, some would, including myself, say merits a Darwin Award being presented to her.
my pet machine
Suicides do not count for a Darwin Award. If you commit suicide then your death wasn't unintentional by definition, though I presume you didn't mean it like that. An execution could be caused by ones own poor judgement, however I don't think the Darwin Awards like such stories even though the chain of causation might stem from oneself. Saddam Hussein's death wasn't from his own spectacular poor judgement anyway.
If you have progeny you can still get a Darwin Award. Your progency do not get 100% of your DNA, so you may not have given them the combination of stupid genes.
This annoys me too. I have this urge to fill a spraybottle with water and start spraying it in very very close proximity to smokers. Then proceed to explain to them that it's "just urine, it doesn't cause cancer or is harmful in any other way, quite opposite to what you're posioning me with".
Somehow I don't think they'll appriciate it so I should probably brush up on my wushu before attempting this. In case I need to defend myself.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Point taken; I was imprecise. What I meant was that Saddam did not directly cause his own death through his own stupid actions. He was an evil, bloodthirsty dictator and deserved execution, but there are many in that category who do not get what they deserve, and there are too many people executed annually to give a Darwin to each one.
:)
As to progeny not being a disqualification, I guess that's true, but it does seem that if one lives into one's 60's and reproduces multiple times, it's a little silly to give one credit for removing oneself from the gene pool. Oh, well.
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
I was scooped on my own story! I was so looking forward to submitting the 2006 Darwin Awards to /. But thanks for turning your minds towards the honorable deaths of these men and women... well OK mostly men... whose heroic self-sacrifice improves our gene pool.
We owe the winners a debt of gratitude!
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Wendy
I cant believe these guys dont check this stuff..
First, the are no overground trains that cross the hudson river, only the east river.. The closest one to the hudson are the amtrack bridge going grom riverdale into manhhatan, and the 1 subway line going from riverdale/kindsbridge to manhattan as well, over the spuyten devil channel that connects east and hudson rivers..
And even if it had been one of these bridges.. ( one of the BMW east river bridges or one of the aforementioned two ).. they all have over hang.. and theres no way he would have falled in the river..
PLUS.. i've lived in nyc for quite a bit.. never heard of this.
Aren't the Darwin Awards normally filled with facts that can't be verified and scientific inconsistencies?
I'm not looking for a reason of why someone would do something stupid but it seems that just about half of the crap that normally gets credited to the Darwin Awards turns out to fall somewhere between technically impossible to incidents with no credible evidence.
Or is this just people using the name "Darwin Awards" in association with any urban legend that involves vast quantities of idiocy?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Boiling coffee has been a common way to server it for a very long time. In fact, that is the only way that a percolator works. I haven't taken apart a newer coffee machine, but I would strongly suspect that that is how they force the water up to the drip spout. Although I am assuming that we are referring the boiling to be before it was poured into a cup, as there is no way that the coffee would remain in a boiling state from the time that it was poured to the time it reached the customer.
Irrelevant nitpick: "toxic" means that it is poisonous. It would be a large stretch to call burning someone with heat, a toxic injury.
I never understood how someone who drives a car, or for that matter uses electricity generated by the burning of fuels, can complain about second hand smoke with a straight face.
If you don't drive a car, or use electricity, I might be able to sympathize with your plight.
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.
This story tells us: You shouldn't smoke with parafin all over you, because you could catch on fire. Shouldn't another darwin award go to everyone who smokes, gets cancer, and then dies because of it? It's the same situation: they were warned. It just took longer for the wax to catch on fire.
or else!
Check snopes.. it's a fake. The linked article also lists it as urban legend.
The truth shall set you free!
"I never understood how someone who drives a car, or for that matter uses electricity generated by the burning of fuels, can complain about second hand smoke with a straight face."
:)
For the same reason I don't have a problem with smokers smoking in public. I never felt the urge to pipe my car exhaust into an enclosed space. YMMV
I really did mean in out door places. Living in California, where public indoor smoking has been illegal for well over a decade now, I often forget that not all states have the same laws concerning indoor smoking. It shouldn't, but every time I travel to a place that doesn't have the anti-indoor-smoking laws, I get a mild surprise.
So... he was engulfed in flames, only got 1st degree burns, and then died from it.
Ummm... Wha??
Karma: NaN
Oops. Yes.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana