Darwin Awards

To take the premise of the Darwin Award seriously is to suppose that stupidity, or rather the kind of stupidity that leads to one's own death, is wholly or partially determined by Genetics .

To qualify, one must die or otherwise render oneself incapable of reproducing in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, such as juggling hand grenades ( is also sufficient to exit the gene pool.

Honorable Mentions go to those who, though not deficient in stupidity, fail to remove themselves from the gene pool. Their foolish and dangerous acts are worth mentioning, if only to keep others from standing near them at their next attempt. Some of these include getting one's head hit by a train while trying to see how close to a moving train one could place one's head without getting hit (, 2001 {Link without Title} ).

Personal Accounts are stories that fit most of the requirements for a Darwin Award or Honorable Mention, but cannot be independently verified for several reasons. Awardees in this category are often submitted by medical professionals who cannot disclose the identity of the people that they encounter in the line of duty. {Link without Title}

While lists of Darwin Awards have been circulating via email for some time, the Awards were popularized by webmistress and author Wendy Northcutt , a.k.a. Darwin. Her site, www.DarwinAwards.com, is by far the best known of the Darwin Award sites.

RULES

Requirements

According to Wendy Northcutt, the five requirements for a Darwin are

Inability to reproduce - Nominee must be killed or sterilized.

:Sometimes this can be a matter of dispute. Many potential awardees may be, in all likelihood, out of the gene pool already due to age, social factors or other reasons. Others have managed to reproduce prior to their inept death.

Excellence - Astounding misapplication of judgment.

:The candidate's idiocy must be unique and sensational. A number of commonly stupid activities (smoking in bed, peeing on the third rail, etc.) are specifically excluded from consideration, due to their commonplace nature.

Self-selection - Cause of one's own demise.

:A hapless bystander hit by an I-beam at a construction site is unlucky. But if you are hit by an I-beam that you rigged above your own balcony to kill Pigeon s, then you are eligible for a Darwin Award. Equally eligible is the Virginia Murderer who wrote a gloating letter of confession to the prosecutor's office "to show you how stupid y'all are" after his conviction was overturned on lack of evidence and he was sentenced to life (with no reproduction) and the lawyer who rammed against a high-story window in order to demonstrate its "strength."[http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1996-01.html

:There is no award for taking someone ---else--- out of the gene pool in an extraordinarily stupid manner.

Maturity - Capable of sound judgment.

:The nominee must be at least past the middle teen years, and free of Mental Defect .

Veracity - The event must be verified.

:The story must be documented by reliable sources, i.e. reputable newspaper articles, confirmed television reports, or responsible eyewitnesses.

:If a story is found to be untrue, it is disqualified and placed in a special section of the archives entitled " Urban Legend s". {Link without Title}

Not Darwins

The following have been specifically stated as being no longer eligible for a Darwin Award, as they are too common:

Smoking in an oxygen tent

Being hit by a Train or Automobile

Climbing into zoo cages

Falling off a precipice while posing or Urinating (spitting is perilously close to being added to this list)

Urinating onto electrified wires, subway rails, etc.

Self-mutilation

Certain forms of carelessness with flammable liquids

Criminals killed fleeing the police.

Plain alcohol poisoning. Alcohol consumption, on the other hand, plays a key role in many Darwin Awards.

HISTORY

Darwin Awards have circulated for as long a time as emails. The Google Usenet archive shows two early mentions of the Darwin Awards,
one dated 1985-08-07 Vending Machine Tipover , which was not mentioned on Usenet again until it was referenced in the 1990-12-07 version of the JATO Rocket Car . It lists the JATO Rocket Car Urban Legend that incorporated the second recorded use of the term "Darwin Award" back in 1990 and was very widely distributed in 1995-1997.

Wendy Northcutt began collecting the stories in 1993 when she was working at Stanford University . She began with a short mailing list of her friends, and as they forwarded these e-mails around, the rate of nominations steadily grew.

BOOKS

Three books of the "best" stories have been published.

''The Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action'' (2000) ISBN 0452283442

''The Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection'' (2001) ISBN 0452284015

''The Darwin Awards III: Survival of the Fittest'' (2003) ISBN 0525947736

''The Darwin Awards IV: Intelligent Design'' (2006) ISBN TBD

MOVIE

A film version, '' The Darwin Awards '', directed by Finn Taylor featuring Joseph Fiennes and Winona Ryder , premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25 , 2006 . The movie will be distributed by Bauer Martinez in the US and Icon Entertainment internationally.

ETHICAL RESERVATIONS

In an interview with CNN , Northcutt revealed that ethical reservations impact the Darwin Awards in the case of children, and goes on to state,

:"Before (the awards became popular), we were an insular community and we could make fun of people and those people (or their families) would never find out. But as it got bigger, I realized there was more and more danger of really hurting people."

SEE ALSO

Testosterone Poisoning

EXTERNAL LINKS

The Darwin Awards

The Darwin Awards Movie

The Real Darwin Awards (criticism of Darwin Awards)

Information About

Darwin Awards