20 Year Study of the Darwin Award

Now for those of you that do not recall what the Darwin Awards are all about:  The Darwin Award is given posthumously for a stunningly stupid act or an act so stupid that it brings about the demise of the performer.  Or as Time online puts it so elegantly:  Every year, Darwin Awards are symbolically given to people who manage to die in such an extraordinarily idiotic manner that they ensure the long-term survival of the human species, by removing one idiot from the gene pool.

That being said, a twenty year study of the awards and recipients showed by far that males performed the bulk of award winning performances while the merest fraction went to women.

I thought it would be fun to pass on some of the winning posts as provided by the British Medical Journal.

The award study defined idiotic risks as "senseless... where the apparent payoff is negligible or non-existent, and the outcome is often extremely negative and often final.

The study's authors took the 20 year compilation and discarded the truly adventurous or professional risk takers which  still left them with  318 awards: 282 given to men, and 36 to women.

The Darwin is unlikely to be awarded to individuals who shoot themselves in the head while demonstrating that a gun is unloaded. This occurs too often and is classed as an accident.  In contrast, candidates shooting themselves in the head to demonstrate that a gun is loaded may be eligible for a Darwin Award -- such as the man who shot himself in the head with a "spy pen" weapon to show his friend that it was real."

Another example of a Darwin winner includes the terrorist who didn't put enough postage on his package when sending a mail bomb; it was returned to him, and he promptly opened it and perished. Or the man who attached a shopping cart to the end of a train car, which dragged him to his death.  Or the man from South Carolina who had disguised himself by spray painting his face gold during an armed robbery, and died from the toxic paint fumes.

Do You Need A Sign? Here are Eight People That Certainly Do!

 

 I know.....doesn't really meet the BMU criteria, however like the Darwins, sometimes you just need a good laugh to brighten your day.

 

With that in mind, here are eight individuals that need a sign around their necks proclaiming them idiotic, deserving extra care when interacting with them!

I know that I have posted some of these on other occasions, but this is still a great and entertaining list in it's own rite. 

I want to thank Carole for sending in the list via email.

Number One Idiot
I am a medical student currently doing  a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center.
Today, this woman  called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants.
I quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be  no need to bring her daughter into the hospital.
She calmed down and at  the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter  some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants.
I told her that she better bring  her daughter into the emergency room right away.

Here's your sign, lady. Wear it with pride.

If A Horse Came Up As Lame as 2012, They'd Have Shot it!

Barry sent in a link that has had me laughing all afternoon.  From Time Magazine  Tech is this article from Harry McCracken covering as he puts it,  the 57 Lamest Tech moment of 2012!

Stuff like:  

• Apple customers at a Vancouver Best Buy, discover  the iPads they’ve purchased look suspiciously like blocks of modeling clay.   Seems  criminals bought iPads and then returned them for refunds but not before removing the iPads  and refilled the boxes.  
• Or Motorola selling  about 100 refurbished Xoom tablets that may still have their previous owners’ information on them. 
• Microsoft ditches the START button in Windows 8?!!
• You know the saying about people that never learn from history?  You know the rest?  Well it should just read dumb and gullible.  It seems  quite a few credible websites bit hook line and sinker on a "historical" discovery that a youthful Abraham Lincoln attempted to patent his idea for local newspapers to give each citizen a personal page to “discuss his Family, his Work, and his Various Endeavors” — in effect, a 19th century dead-tree version of Facebook.  Great idea, totally fake....

And this is just the first few listings!

Click here to go to the TIME article.

Why did the starship Enterprise have such a stupid bridge?

From the techrepublic blog!

You know, I have thought this for years and now someone has had the balls to come out and ask the obvious! Who in their right mind would put a command and control center right out where it could be blasted and waste all the ranking officers in one shot?! I tell you why, because Roddenbury wanted that opening shot of the very first show where the camera zooms right down onto the bridge. (I mean the REAL first show that got chopped all to crap in the 2 hour recut Minagerie) I like the line the article writer in Techrepublic wrote..."Seriously, if Sulu ever misjudges the top of the doorjamb in spacedock, every major character gets scraped out of continuity like extra icing off a cupcake." Even their graphic was a laugh riot....check out the whole article or rant if you will... damn funny.