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2009 Darwin Award Winners Announced
Greg Lindahl writes "From the woman who jumped in a swollen creek to rescue her drowning moped, to the man who hopped over the divider at the edge of the highway to take a leak, and plunged 65 feet to his death, 2009 was a year both exceptional and unexceptional for Darwin Award-worthy behavior!"
They're all random people no one knows, and frankly, people don't feel a lot for people they don't know. I think it's more stupid when people go "oh no, 50 people died on other side of the world - let's pretend we're sad" and then completely ignoring how many people die every die, and how many people die in wars and such. I can bet you don't really feel sad for the iraqi insurgents, do you? If you feel sad for a random person, you should feel sad for another random person too.
And black humor is old thing.
These things have gone from funny to angry and vindictive. In particular, that overpass-falling one strikes me as an easy mistake. Here in Raleigh, we just had two people do something very similar: an overpass (near the Crabtree area, for locals) looks for all the world like it's a single bridge. But in reality, each lane is its own structure, with about four to six feet between the two that drops straight down to the freeway below. I'd driven by a hundred times and had no idea, and while yes, I'd like to think I'd look before I leaped over, I could easily see paying more attention to traffic than the divider itself and making the same mistake.
That entry happened, according to the site, in Florida, so it's a different area. But there's certainly not enough information there to make a judgment call on his intelligence.
It puts an air of arrogance that they themselves are obviously smarter than everyone who has died unnaturally simply because they themselves are still alive.
People who go out of their way to kill themselves despite numerous, clear safety measures are stupid. Sure they may have reasons for what they did, stupid reasons. OK, there still significant disagreement over the meaning of "intelligence", but taking reasonable steps to avoid death is a handy rule of thumb (excepting making a sacrifice to save other lives). You can read the comments of family members for many of these submissions, and the usual theme is not "he made a noble sacrifice" but "he was always doing crazy stuff like that".
Plus, anyone who breaks into a live power station to steal the copper from the power lines (which is about half the Darwin Award submissions these days) is not only stupid but an asshole, and deserves all possible criticism.
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