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Darwin Awards 2006

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the natural-selection-in-action dept.

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."

42 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. Fool me twice... by rancher+dan+3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Are these real events or made up ones, like in previous years?

    1. Re:Fool me twice... by Elliot_Lin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They are real. There wouldn't be lots of point honoring a non-existent person for something they hadn't done.

    2. Re:Fool me twice... by schon · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm not sure about the others, but the "Star wars" one happened in early 2005, not 2006 - although whether one person died or not I don't know (last I heard it was just injuries.)

      Slashdot covered it here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/24/141225 3

    3. Re:Fool me twice... by El+Torico · · Score: 2, Informative
      Apparently the one about the drowning Pastor is. This is from the World Net Daily of August 30, 2006,

      Pastor Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation he could repeat the biblical miracle, and he attempted it from a beach in Gabon's capital of Libreville. "He took his congregation to the beach saying he would walk across the Komo estuary, which takes 20 minutes by boat. He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head and he never came back."
      --
      In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
    4. Re:Fool me twice... by lessthan · · Score: 2, Informative

      The article linked is to the Darwin Awards website, which verifies all its winners. the articles you linked are for the chain-mails that make the rounds. why did you do this?

      --
      Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
    5. Re:Fool me twice... by drxenos · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.
    6. Re:Fool me twice... by GrumpySimon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah - this is the problem with these, they sound far too urban-legend-y to be true. The stories do have a "Confirmed True by Darwin" note, but I only counted ONE that backed things up with a link to a newspaper story.

      With things like google news, it's certainly not hard to find five or six million versions of the same article, so until they do this, the Darwin awards are just a collection of mildly funny stories that happened to someone's Aunt's cousin twice removed. ( Seriously - one of them starts with "I am 14, and I know this is a true story..." -- WTF? ).

      --
      henry -- the human evolution news relay
    7. Re:Fool me twice... by heyitsgogi · · Score: 5, Informative

      From snopes.com: The various "Annual Darwin Awards" e-mails (such as the one which is the topic of this article) do not originate with DarwinAwards.com; they are put together by unknown persons. -- snopes asserts that the website is legit.

      --
      who let a poet in here?
    8. Re:Fool me twice... by kirun · · Score: 4, Informative

      You may well have read some article assuming they were the same, there are rather too many "journalists" who get all excited when they think they can steal something off the Internet in place of doing real work. The Darwin Awards aren't the only ones suffering from this problem, the True Stella Awards site often gets listed as the source for the bogus Stella Awards email.

      --
      I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
    9. Re:Fool me twice... by drxenos · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.
    10. Re:Fool me twice... by CommunistHamster · · Score: 3, Funny

      No, just a fatwa. Don't worry.

    11. Re:Fool me twice... by nacturation · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.
    12. Re:Fool me twice... by Web+Goddess · · Score: 4, Informative

      Darwin Awards Condoms: Keep yourself out of the gene pool.

      My website has some cruft; however, I do my best to sort truth from fiction. And remember, I've improved over the years, and so has Internet-accessible news.

      There was this one time I was fooled "backwards" over a story I KNEW was an Urban Legend. It happened in the ocean off Pee Wee beach, near Darwin, Australia. The woman (a woman!) supposedly drank a case of beer before submerging to give head to her boyfriend... and never came back up. The man's lawyer was supposedly named Ms. Cox, and his last name was Payne. Plus the identical story was submitted hundreds of times. Urban legend for sure!

      A few years later... a few people have written to say the story is true, but you know, Pee Wee Beach? Ms. Cox? I still think it's an urban legend, until the Australian court reporter launches himself at me, irate, defamation of his reputation, something like that... Oops!

      Who knew?

      I have only quite recently started to link to the original submissions. But since late 2001, anyone can search the Slush Pile / Reject Pile and find the original sources. I try my very best to not alter facts, and to incorporate all the relevant facts, but well... sometimes I err on colorful ways of expressing things, or say what he might have been "thinking" which of course no one can know.

      Darwin Awards: The tree of life is self-pruning.

  2. true (almost darwin) story... by udderly · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:Fake -- Not! by SteveM · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  4. Lightsabre fuel duels by CdBee · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  5. "Stuff that matters" by chia_monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:"Stuff that matters" by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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
  6. RPG? by Wormbrain · · Score: 5, Funny

    "whacking RPGs with hammers.."

    Here I am thinking one of my favorite MMOs got nerfed. I need to get out more.

    --
    http://wormbrain.com/
    1. Re:RPG? by amper · · Score: 3, Funny

      And here I am, trying to figure out how one could possibly get killed by whacking a D&D set with a hammer...

      OK, maybe if you gave a d8 a hard enough glancing blow, it might shoot off at a bizarre angle, blast right through your eye, and lodge in your brain?

  7. I believe! by beaverfever · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  8. Whacking RPG by stesch · · Score: 3, Funny

    On my AS/400 job I wanted to whack RPG with a hammer, too.

  9. Just malicious by badzilla · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  10. Your name is "badzilla?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    How can you call yourself badzilla and NOT think the stories are funny ;-)

  11. The Slashdot reader Darwin award. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!

  12. Not so funny candidate--Christine Boskoff by joneshenry · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Not so funny candidate--Christine Boskoff by canajin56 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Read that article more carefully. It wasn't a thunderstorm. He hit some power lines with his kite, which the "article" says is like Franklin because power lines are sort of like an artificial thunder storm ;)

      --
      ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
  13. Favorite Darwin Award Classic by dattaway · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  14. Re:Not so well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    u r so rite man !! i tel meh teecha it alla time

  15. Faithful Flotation by Sloppy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Faithful Flotation by rtra · · Score: 2, Funny

      I've met a elder villager who tried to walk on water. He strapped some small floaters to his feet. And he floated allright, but upside down, with his head submerse. He was rescued by his spectators. He was from village "Palorca", Trás-os-Montes, Portugal.

    2. Re:Faithful Flotation by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Funny

      It was in an estuary, which is where a river meets the ocean. He apperently started walking into the water, and kept on going until the water got over his head, and never came back. Can't say for sure what he was thinking, but I know people who would hold onto such faith until death, thinking, "if I give up now it shows I don't have faith."

      I give him props for strongly believing whatever it was he preached, though if he's in heaven now, Jesus is probably bitch-slapping him sayin, "you don't know nothing about faith!"

      Great story in any case.

      --
      Qxe4
  16. Re:Fool. by chia_monkey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  17. No integrity by Lord+Kano · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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
  18. Re:Wait a minute by n0dna · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  19. Mountaneering and other "Extreme Sports" exempted. by Ellis+D.+Tripp · · Score: 4, Informative

    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
  20. First Prize goes to; by jafac · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  21. Stupid Spearfisher by pNutz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  22. Re:Posthumous Award..... by nomadic · · Score: 2, Informative

    your body will tell you when you are doing something you shouldn't be doing. To over-hydrate and not know it is baloney

    I strenuously disagree. Death by over-hydration happens frequently because people don't realize they're overhydrated. The symptoms of overhydration are similar to those for a lot of other medical conditions (bizarrely, a lot of them mimic the symptoms for dehydration).

  23. Real news by Propaganda13 · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  24. Re:Fool. by haeger · · Score: 2, Insightful
    ...not only fill their own lungs with a cancerous death but also those non-smokers around them.

    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.

     

    .haeger

    --
    You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
  25. Scooped! Arghhh. by Web+Goddess · · Score: 3, Informative

    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!

    Here's what it looks like to be slashdotted: In the past seventeen hours, my top referers are:

            646 www.bluesnews.com
            649 www.fazed.org
            659 b2.is
            941 www.b2.is
            967 fazed.net
          1124 www.fark.com
          1271 www.g4tv.com
          1279 www.uniquepeek.com
          1391 reddit.com
          1951 www.google.com
          2197 www.fazed.net
          2244 www.flabber.nl
          2487 i-am-bored.com
          2594 meneame.net
          8009 www.i-am-bored.com
        56796 slashdot.org

    So far, 1,528,483 total hits, 10x more than my weekend average. The server seems like it's ho0lding up fine (any complaints?) -- THANK YOU, LMI.NET!

    Wendy