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."

Fool me twice...

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

Re:Fool me twice...

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 [slashdot.org]

Re:Fool me twice...

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 [stellaawards.com] site often gets listed as the source for the bogus Stella Awards email.

Re:Fool me twice...

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.

Lightsabre fuel duels

I can warrant for this one, it happpened 100 metres from my house in Hertfordshire, UK

Re:Fool me twice...

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).

Re:Fool me twice...

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.
 

I believe!

They do claim these are true stories. I can attest for at least one of them [darwinawards.com]. 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.

Real as real can be.

...although the reaction to some of these should be: "get real".

true (almost darwin) story...

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.

"Stuff that matters"

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.

Re:"Stuff that matters"

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.

Re:Fool.

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.

RPG?

"whacking RPGs with hammers.."

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

Re:RPG?

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?

Whacking RPG

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

Just malicious

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.

The Slashdot reader Darwin award.

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!

Not so funny candidate--Christine Boskoff

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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [nwsource.com] 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?

Mountaneering and other "Extreme Sports" exempted.

From the Darwin Awards rules page at:

http://darwinawards.com/rules/rules2.html [darwinawards.com]

"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."

Favorite Darwin Award Classic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO_Rocket_Car [wikipedia.org]

"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.

Faithful Flotation

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?

Re:Faithful Flotation

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.

hmm missing some notables

I am surprised Saddam was not mentioned. That and the morons who killed themselves protesting the mohammed cartoons.

No integrity

I lost all respect for the Darwin Awards when they refused to give one to JFK Jr. [salon.com]

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

First Prize goes to;

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.

Stupid Spearfisher

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.

Here ya go

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2 762445&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312 [go.com]

Posthumous Award.....

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.

"Do Not Use"

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.

Missed stop train story is fake..

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...

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?

The smoking story - snubbed out - wrong moral?

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.

Stubbed Out

The resulting inferno "cremated" his skin condition, and left first-degree burns on much of his body. Despite excellent treatment, he died in intensive care.

So... he was engulfed in flames, only got 1st degree burns [wikipedia.org], and then died from it.

Ummm... Wha??

Re:Fake -- Not!

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

Re:Not so well...

Agreed. After all, the ability to spell is oh so important when determining someone's intelligence.

Re:And this years special goes to...

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.

Re:Wait a minute

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/hert s/4575291.stm [bbc.co.uk]

I guess if I couldn't work google, I'd post AC too.