Darwin Awards

The Science and Technology of Growing Young: An Insider's Guide to the Breakthroughs That Will Dramatically Extend Our Lifespan . . . And What You Can Do Right Now
by Sergey Young
Published 23 Aug 2021

The song and video have been watched a staggering 190 million times on YouTube, I suspect many of them on loop by users like myself for whom once was not nearly enough. If you need a good laugh, go search for “Dumb Ways to Die” right now. A similar internet poke at the lighter side of death comes to us from the Darwin Awards, a satirical salute to “the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it in a spectacular manner.” The Darwin Awards are granted each year to those who have made the most foolish (and fatal) decisions of their prematurely shortened lives. The infamous stories of the “winners” are featured on the site in sardonic (but not unsympathetic) tones.

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That would never happen to me,” note that some of the awards are won for decidedly less exotic adventures—like the fifty-eight-year-old Australian woman who was run over by her own car after she parked it on an incline to check something in the trunk. (She forgot to engage the parking brake.) While some of the most memorable Darwin Awards do involve firearms, exotic animals, and insertion of foreign objects in body cavities, just as many result from mishaps with vehicles, kitchen equipment, or other mundane circumstances. In short, it could happen to you. Unintentional poisoning is the leading cause of accidental death in the world, claiming an estimated 10.7 million years of healthy life, globally, every single year.

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Comfort, Alex computer vision computing innovations connectivity consciousness consolidation of power continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) continuous monitoring Count Me In COVID-19 CPAP machines CRISPR CRISPR-Cas9 cryobanking C-Scan CTRL Labs Cullinan, Rory Culver, Kenneth Cutter, Cynthia D daf genes Dana Farber Cancer Institute Darwin, Charles Darwin Awards data. see also health data Davidson, Richard da Vinci Surgical Systems DeAngelo, Joseph James, Jr. death(s) accidental due to diagnostic errors fear of and meaning in life old age as cause of premature (see also increasing your lifespan) preventable causes of psychological age and risk of telemedicine in preventing de Cabo, Rafael deep learning Deep Longevity deep neural networks (DNN) de Grey, Aubrey de Keizer, Peter de la Zerda, Adam DeLisi, Charles DeSilva, Ashanthi Deuel, Thomas Dexcomm diagnosis access to accuracy of current practices for early by telemedicine diagnostic devices in Internet of Body near-future DIY devices new DIY developments for wearable diagnostics based on “omes,” and current paradigm of diagnosis data at center of epigenetic genetic with Internet of Body liquid biopsy near future DIY diagnostics new DIY technology developments noninvasive and affordable using microbiome Diamandis, Peter diet and foods caloric restriction in preventing/treating disease sugar in Discovery DNA DNAFit DNA testing DNN clocks Doudna, Jennifer drugs. see pharmaceutical interventions E economic disparity economics, genetic engineering and education eGenesis Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emmanuel, Ezekiel Emotiv Engineered Arts Enterome entropy epigenetic clocks epigenetic diagnostics epigenome ethical concerns with immortality potential for evolutionary conflict question of free will reshaping of social constructs wealth inequality eukaryotes Eversense evolutionary conflict exercise/physical activity EXi EXO Imaging extreme longevity common reaction to forms of logical case for oneness of man and machine for technical immortality for technical inevitability of F Facebook Fahy, Greg family unit Far Horizon of Longevity (200 plus years). see also individual topics future technologies morality of immortality fear Feelreal Fernandez, Eduardo Ferrazzi, Keith fetal monitors Feynman, Richard Fitbit Flatiron Health FOXO-4 Frankl, Viktor Freenome free radical theory of aging free will Freud, Sigmund future technologies. see also extreme longevity G Gates, Bill GED Match Gelsinger, Jesse gene editing gene (genetic) engineering altering genes inside body cells background of complex questions surrounding CRISPR in gene editing in ending cancer future of of longevity genes questions surrounding Generative Tensorial Reinforcement Learning (GENTRL) gene sequencing gene therapy genetic diagnostics genome altering Human Genome Project instability of in precision medicine for reversing cell aging sequencing Ghandi, Mahatma Gilbert, Walter Gilead Sciences goal alignment Gobel, David Gomez, Bernardéta Google Gore, Adrian government gratitude Gray, Victoria Greger, Michael Griffin, Dana Grossman, Terry Gulshan, Varun Gurdon, Sir John B.

Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil
by Hamish McKenzie
Published 30 Sep 2017

If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels, we will see carbon dioxide concentration at “levels we don’t even see in the fossil record.” He shows the Keeling Curve, which plots the frightening escalation. A man in the crowd shouts: “Save us, Elon!” Musk hesitates and laughs. “I think we collectively should do something about this,” he offers, “and not try to win the Darwin Award.” (The Darwin Awards “salute those who improve the species by accidentally removing themselves from it.”) Then Musk gets on with his message. He wants to talk about a missing piece. There’s not enough wind or solar power generation today to replace fossil fuels completely. A major barrier has been that renewables are inconstant and therefore unreliable.

Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess
by Robert H. Frank
Published 15 Jan 1999

And given the scale of the waste inherent in our current consumption patterns, we would be foolish not to explore the possibility that similar opportunities remain to be exploited. CHAPTER 12 SELF-HELP? Economists and a growing number of other social scientists and policy analysts use the well-informed, dispassionate, rational-actor model to explain and predict human behavior. Yet much human behavior is not well captured by this model. For example, the annual Darwin Award is granted posthumously to the individual whose death from ill-considered behavior best protects the human gene pool from degradation. One winner was crushed to death by a soft drink machine as he sought to shake a free Coke from it. Another was extinguished when his car, equipped with a jet assisted take-off unit, became airborne and crashed into a mountainside.

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See Progressive consumption tax Context, 129-32 evaluation and, 130-32 perception and, 129-30 sensitivity to, 162-63, 164, 165 Cook, Philip, 37, 240 Corporate perks, higher tax rates and, 231-32 Corry, Don, 244-45 Cosmetic surgery, 25-27, 35, 47, 158 Cosmides, Leda, 125 Crack cocaine epidemic, 61 Craftsman movement, 187 Credit Bank MBNA, 46-47 Credit-card debt, 45-47 Crime, income inequality and, 240-41 Crystal, Graef, 43 Curran, Diane, 47-48 Cut Your Bills in Half: Thousands of Tips to Save Thousands of Dollars, 188 Damasio, Antonio, 126 Darwin, Charles, 123, 147-48, 271 Darwin Award, 173 Dauten, Dale, 49 Davidson, Richard, 70-71 Debt consumer, 45-47 national, 252 Debtors Anonymous, 47 Decision making ability signaling and, 139-40 in bargaining, 137-39 emotions and, 126-27 de la Renta, Oscar, 23 Dimorphism, sexual, 150-51 Disease, relative income and, 143-44 Distributional maxim, Marxian, 121 Domenici, Pete, 224, 225 Dominguez, Joe, 187 Downshifting movement.

Panderer to Power
by Frederick Sheehan
Published 21 Oct 2009

A6. 34 The Center for Future Studies, Developing and Using Scenarios, p. 15; http://www.futurestudies.co.uk//images/scenarios_presentation.pdf. 35 Fred Hickey, HighTech Strategist, May 4, 2001, p. 6. 36 Ibid., November 6, 2003, p. 1. One index was rising: a biography of Alan Greenspan, Maestro, written by Bob Woodward. It was number three in the December 24 New York Times Book Re vie w nonfiction bestseller list. On its tail was The Darwin Awards, a chronicle of characters whose behavior was spectacularly inept. It trailed at number four.37 37 Best Sellers, New York Times Book Review, December 24, 2000. 20 Stocks Collapse and America Asks: “What Happens When King Alan Goes?” 2001 Alas, technology has not allowed us to see into the future any more clearly than we could previously.1 —Alan Greenspan, January 11, 2002 January 2001 was a banner month for stocks.

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W., 69, 70, 122–123, 306, 323 Bush, George W., 247, 278, 308, 339 BusinessWeek, 52–53, 54, 55, 60, 81, 209–210, 233 Butz, Earl, 56 C California real estate, 63, 86–87, 88–91, 165, 273, 274, 279, 289, 292, 293, 295, 331 Campbell, Kirsten, 233 Capital, 364 Capitalism, 362–364 Carlyle Group, 323 Carry trade, 125–126, 128, 162 in 2006, 313 in late 1990s, 166 Carter, Jimmy, 62–63, 67, 77 Casey, William, 69 CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), 313–314 CDS (credit default swaps), 314–316 CEA (see Council of Economic Advisers) Central banks, 126 1998 rate cuts by, 195 and bubbles, 203, 204 currencies degraded by, 305–306 and price stability, 287, 298 (See also specific banks) Centrust Savings Bank (Miami, Florida), 89 CEOs (see Chief executive officers) Chambers, John, 235 Chase Manhattan Bank, 112 Chemical Bank, 35 Chicago, Ill, 45, 295 Cheney, Richard “Dick,” 54, 300 Chief executive officers (CEOs), 128, 235, 318 Chinese central bank, 308–310 Chrysler, 62, 246 Churning, in mortgage markets, 262 Cisco Systems, 177, 207, 216, 235, 237, 238, 243, 248 Citicorp (Citigroup), 78, 79, 114–115, 275, 276, 347n.48, 354 Clark, Jim, 141 Clinton, Bill, 136–138, 142, 143, 216–217, 323, 339 Clinton, Hillary, 339 CMBS (commercial mortgagebacked security) market, 273–274 CMOs (collateralized mortgage obligations), 130 CNBC, ix, 55n.33, 64, 104, 119, 193, 198, 212–213, 297, 322, 342 Cohen, Abby Joseph, 174–175, 208, 232, 248–249 Cohen, Steve, 324 Collateral, LTCM failure and, 185 Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), 313–314 Collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs), 130 The Collective, 14–15 Columbia Savings and Loan (Beverly Hills, California), 89, 90, 93 Columbia University, 12, 27, 28, 333 Commercial banks: bailouts of, 72, 78–79 derivative contracts held by, 312 in early 1990s, 125 mortgages held by, 312 Commercial mortgagebacked security (CMBS) market, 273–274 Commercial paper 90, 117, 306 Community Reinvestment Act (1995), 273, 277 Computer industry: in 1997–1998, 197–198 in 1999, 207 profit losses in, 218 Computer prices, adjustment of, 153, 230 Conference Board, 13 Conglomerates, 33–36, 349 Consumer debt, 251–258 in early 2000s, 271 in mid–1990s, 134 renewing economic growth through, 311 (See also Mortgages) Consumer Price Index (CPI): in 1960s, 39 calculation of, 147–152 changes to, 50 and inflation of asset prices, 170–171 Consumer spending, economic growth and, 291, 292, 311 Consumerism, 22, 51, 52, 63 Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust, 78–79, 306 Cooper, Sherry, 344 Coraine, Richard, 355 Corporate bonds, yields on, 72 Corporate (business) debt, 99, 134 Corporate executives, priorities of, 209–210 Corporate growth, 77 Corporate profits: as measure of productivity, 197 and price of stocks, 175, 177–178, 194, 216 Council of Economic Advisers (CEA): under Carter, 61 under Ford, 5, 47, 50, 52–57, 97 under Kennedy, 26 Counterparty risk, 182 Countrywide Bank, 334 Countrywide Credit, 165, 279 Countrywide Financial, 271, 273, 277, 347n.48 CPI (see Consumer Price Index) Cramer, Jim, 208 Cranston, Alan, 85 Credit: in 1960s, 34, 37 in 1970s, 48 in 1980s, 77 in 1990s, 166 in 1999, 209 in 2001, 245 from 2005–2007, 312 consumer, 252–257 expanded access to, 296 and Great Depression, 352 and house prices, 290 inflation in, 173 from investment banks, 125 as liquidity, 363 at mid-century, 21, 22 and recession of early 1990s, 124 and rise in corporate/consumer debt, 134 worldwide bubble in, 302, 319 Credit default swaps (CDS), 314–316 Credit-rating agencies, 270, 271, 314 Crime, inflation of 1970s and, 44–45 Crime, appraisal fraud, 280 Crocker, Donald, 86, 87 D Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, 288 The Darwin Awards, 236 Daily Telegraph (London), 341, 344 Davis Polk & Wardwell, 116 Day trading, 169, 211 D.E. Shaw & Company, 323 DeConcini, Dennis, 85 Deflation, 287–288, 359 de la Renta, Françoise, 75 de la Renta, Oscar, 75 Dell Computer Corporation, 130, 207, 216 Depression, deflation and, 285–286 Deregulation of banking, 99–100, 102 Derivatives, 111, 190 in 2007, 303 Congressional hearings on, 131 credit default swaps, 314 and fed funds rate, 130 Greenspan’s understanding of, 189–190, 343 held by commercial banks, 312 in late 1990s, 164–165 and LTCM failure, 183 mortgage securities, 273 and recession of early 1990s, 124–125 risk of, 131 synthetic CDOs, 313 Deutsche Bank, 300, 345 Dillon, Douglas, 26, 77 Dingell, John, 115 Discount rate, 1987 stock market crash and, 112–113 DJIA (see Dow Jones Industrial Average) Dollar(s): in 1980s, 72 and Asian financial crisis, 172–173 and gold standard, 22, 38, 41 and positive inflation, 288 recycled into Treasury securities, 309 shorting, 316–317 value of, 1–2, 5 as world’s reserve currency, 49 Dow 36,000 (James K.

Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist
by Michael Shermer
Published 8 Apr 2020

Heavy armor plating may be good for defending against claws but slows you up for escaping fast predators. Colorful feathers may grant you higher status and attract females, but predators will see you hiding in the bushes. Antlers may ward off challenging males and appeal to females, but you might win a Darwin Award for allowing yourself to be taken out of the gene pool by a predator. The value of such features to the species depends entirely on its overall reproductive success. If effervescent tail feathers lead to more matings with their resultant offspring than they lead to individuals being consumed by predators, then the overall reproductive success for peacocks and peahens is increased and we can say that the peacock’s tail is “good” for the species.

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See alternative archaeology Archetype Theory of Truth (Peterson), 304–307 Arden, Jacinda, 29 Arendt, Hannah, 34 Areopagitica (Milton), 3–4 Aristotle, 231 Asimov’s Axiom, 117–118 atheism anti-something movements are doomed to fail, 90 challenging religious beliefs, 86–92 freedom to disbelieve, 86–92 meaning of life and, 103–108 morality and, 87–88 New Atheist movement, 289 power of positive assertions, 90 rational consciousness raising, 91 societal health and, 88 Australia effects of gun law reform, 174–175 Austria effects of gun control, 187–190 authority bias, 24 availability bias, 24 Aveling, Edward, 90, 288 Baby Boomer generation, 65 Bachmann, Michele, 81, 82–83 Baer, Elizabeth, 1–2 Bailey, Ronald, 289 baraminology, 58 Barash, David, 287 Barlow, Connie, 289 Barna, George, 87–88 Baron-Cohen, Simon, 165 Barrow, John, 120 Bastiat, Frédéric, 214–215 Baumeister, Roy, 34–35 Bazile, Leon M., Judge, 72 Beale, Howard, 88 Beckner, Stephen, 300 belief pluralism case for, 81–85 beliefs cognitive biases and, 23–24 believability bias, 24 Bentham, Jeremy, 139 Bentley, Alex, 86 Berg, Alan, 30 Berger, Victor, 2 Berkman, Alexander, 2 Berlin Wall, 217 Berra, Yogi, 289 Bible, 224–225, 317 Big Bang, 121 Big Five personality traits, 260–261 Big Questions Online (BQO) program, 103 bigotry historical influences, 30–31 Bill of Rights, 143 bio-altruism, 106 Biography Bias, 262 birth order personality and, 261–262 Black Lives Matter movement, 132 Black Swan events, 29, 162 Blackburn, Simon, 287 Bligh, William, 156–159 Bod, Rens, 225–226 Boemeke, Isabelle, 74 Boko Haram, 34 Bolt, Robert, 8, 22 boom-and-bust cycles, 121 Boone, Richard, 298 Boonin, David, 44 bottom-up self-organization, 203–205, 215–217 Bouchard, Thomas, 289 Boudreaux, Donald, 212–213 Brandeis, Louis, Justice, 41, 44 brane universes, 123 Breivik, Anders Behring, 29, 165–166 Brexit, 153 Brin, David, 153 Brin, Sergey, 260 Bronowski, Jacob, 299 Brooks, Arthur C., 89, 212 Browne, Janet, 288 Browning, Robert, 160 Bruruma, Ian, 282 Bryan, William Jennings, 48 Buckholtz, Joshua W., 168 Buffett, Warren, 211 Burke, Edmund, 153 Bush, George W., 138 Calhoun, John C., 14 Callahan, Tim, 115–116 Calvin, William, 289 Camus, Renaud, 30 Carlson, Randall, 314 Carroll, Sean, 117, 118, 121 Cassidy, John, 212–213 categorical imperative (Kant), 240 censorship, 1–9arguments against, 19–27 college students’ responses to controversial subjects, 64–78 hate speech, 28–37 Holocaust denial, 38–43 Principle of Interchangeable Perspectives, 78 Ten Commandments of free speech and thought, 7–8 trigger warnings and, 66–67 Center for Inquiry (CFI), 269, 271 Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), 250–251 Change.org, 33–34 Christakis, Nicholas, 154–156 Christchurch, New Zealand, massacre responses to, 28–37 Christian, Fletcher, 156–159 Christian values v. the US Constitution, 81–85 Churchill, Ward, 41 civilization free trade institutions, 249–251 how to get to Civilization,1.0, 251–253 influence of political tribalism, 243–246 pre-financial crisis world, 243 Types of civilization, 246–247 Clark, Kenneth, 299 classical liberalism, 136case for, 138–144 Clinton, Bill, 83, 253 Coase, Ronald, 201 Cockell, Charles S., 150–152 Coddington, Jonathan, 59 cognitive biases, 23–24 cognitive dissonance, 95–96 Colavito, Jason, 321 collective action problem, 198–201 college faculty political bias among, 75–76 college students consequences of left-leaning teaching bias, 75–76 drive to censor controversial subjects, 64–78 Free Speech Movement of the late 1960s, 64–65 Generation Z and how they handle challenges, 64–65 microaggressions, 68–70 provision of safe spaces for, 67–68 trigger warnings, 66–67 views on freedom of speech, 64–78 colleges avoidance of controversial or sensitive subjects, 25 causes of current campus unrest, 71–76 disinvitation of controversial speakers, 25 lack of viewpoint diversity, 75–76 speaker disinvitations, 70–71 ways to increase viewpoint diversity, 76–78 Collins, Francis, 60 Collins, Jim, 263–264 Columbine murders, 169 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), 271 communication microaggressions, 68–70 competitive victimhood, 132 Conan Doyle, Arthur, 280, 283 confirmation bias, 24, 316–318 conjecture and refutation, 8, 23 conscription as slavery, 1–2 conservatism, 134–136 conservatives Just World Theory, 255 Strict Father metaphor for the nation as a family, 193–197 consistency bias, 24 conspiracy theories Intelligent Design advocates, 55–63 contingency influence on how lives turn out, 258–264 Copernican principle, 120 Core Theory of forces and particles, 118 correspondence theory of truth, 305, 306 Cosmides, Leda, 238 Costly Signaling Theory, 208 Coulter, Ann, 13 Cowan, David, 263 Craig, William Lane, 104, 108–109 Craig’s Categorical Error, 109 Creation Science, 50 creationism freedom of speech issue, 44–54 level of support in America, 46 question of equal coverage in science teaching, 50–54 variety of creationist theories, 50–52 view of Richard Dawkins, 293–294 why people do not support evolution, 47–50 Cremo, Michael, 316 Crichton, Michael, 123 Cruise, Tom, 100 cry bullies, 77 cults Scientology as a cult, 96–98 culture of honor, 73 culture of victimhood, 73 Darley, John, 317 Darrow, Clarence, 52–53 Darwin, Charles, 280connection with Adam Smith, 203–205 development of the theory of evolution, 44–46 impact of the Darwinian revolution, 44–47 on science and religion, 90 On the Origin of Species, 104–105 problem of the peacock’s tail, 200 skepticism, 270, 287–288 Darwin Awards, 207 Darwin economy, 199–201 Darwinian literary studies, 306 Darwinian universes, 122 Darwinism misinterpretation for ideological reasons, 60–61 neo-Darwinism, 62 scientific questioning, 61–63 Dawkins, Richard, 55, 61, 87, 89, 104at the Humanity 3000 event (2001), 289–291 influence of, 287–289 on creationism, 293–294 on pseudoscience, 292–294 on religion, 287–289, 293–295 scientific skepticism, 291–295 sense of spirituality, 295–296 Day-Age Creationists, 51 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 139 Debs, Eugene V., 2 Declaration of Independence, 27, 72 Defant, Marc, 314 Del Ray, Lester, 95 delegative democracy, 149 Dembski, William, 49, 55, 63, 280 democracy delegative democracy, 149 direct democracy, 149–150, 153 freedom of speech and, 26 impact of cyber-technology, 153 representational democracy, 149 Dennett, Daniel, 87, 287 Denying History (Shermer and Grobman), 38, 42, 78 Descartes, René, 230 Deutsch, David, 287 devil what he is due, 8–9 who he is, 8–9 Diamond, Jared, 147–148, 208–209, 228, 314, 321, 322 Diderot, Denis, 270 direct democracy, 149–150, 153 Dirmeyer, Jennifer, 215 District of Columbia v.

Twilight of Abundance: Why the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short
by David Archibald
Published 24 Mar 2014

The British can’t do much about what happens beyond their borders, but they could refrain from doing things that harm themselves. They could be trying to move beyond fossil fuels to an energy source that is less ephemeral than the wind. Never mind, the next twenty years will be an experience both cathartic and character-forming for those living in the UK. It will be a large-scale version of the Darwin Awards in which everyone gets to participate. Choosing politicians via the ballot box—for example, the MPs who voted for the Climate Change Act of 2008—always has consequences for one’s standard of living. As basic commodities become scarcer and the planet cools, those electoral choices could affect whether one gets to live at all.

Cooking for Geeks
by Jeff Potter
Published 2 Aug 2010

But something happens to some geeks when handed a box full of spatulas, whisks, and sugar. Lockup. Fear. Foreign feelings associated with public speaking, or worse, coulrophobia. If you’re this type, this book is for you. Then there’s another type of geek: the über-nerd, who’s unafraid to try anything...maybe a bit too unafraid, but hasn’t had that Darwin Award moment (yet). The type of geek who is either "all on or all off," who addresses every aspect of the perfect cup of coffee, down to measuring the pressure with which the grinds are tamped into the espresso machine’s portafilter. This kind of geek is always on the search for the next bit of knowledge.

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The container will rupture at some point. Ice plugs can form in narrow-mouthed openings, too, so avoid stuffing things like cotton into the opening. "Yeah, yeah," you might be thinking, "thanks, but I’ll be fine." Probably. But that’s what most people think until they’re posthumously (post-humorously?) given a Darwin Award. What could possibly go wrong once you get it home? One German chef blew both hands off while attempting to recreate some of Chef Heston Blumenthal’s recipes. And then there’s what happened when someone at Texas A&M removed the pressure-release valve on a large dewar and welded the opening shut.

The 4-Hour Chef: The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, Learning Anything, and Living the Good Life
by Timothy Ferriss
Published 1 Jan 2012

Eating the Vermonster, it turned out, was like running a marathon. For amateurs, at least, a marathon really starts at mile 20. Anyone can look at the sunshine, speed walk, and enjoy the first 75%. The last 6.2 miles are what separate the boys from the men, the dainty girls from the Black Widow, and the smart people from the Darwin Award winners. At 20 minutes, our 20-mile point, Roman said what we were both thinking: “There’s nothing fun about this anymore.” He looked straight down at the table and then picked up the Vermonster bucket to drink melted sugar, food coloring, and milk. I took a bite of a syrupy, soggy cookie, and my diaphragm jumped like a frightened cat.

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‡ San Francisco Department of Public Health, “Director’s Rules and Regulations for Prevention and Control of Rodents and Other Vectors, and to Promote Housing Habitability,” http://www.sfdph.org/dph/files/EHSdocs/ehsPublsdocs/EHSDicrectorRules/vectorControl.pdf (accessed September 18, 2012). 24 He and I both share a fascination with the exposome: in simple terms, the study of how genes can change due to environmental exposure to compounds, ranging from benzenes to endocrine-mimicking pesticides like atrazine, commonly found in Nor-Cal groundwater. 25 Attention, Darwin Award winners: This is a joke. Don’t inhale zinc. 26 See the “Nine Must-Know Knots” in the Appendix.. 27 Lime juice has a pH of 2.2–2.4 on a scale from 1–14, where 1 is most acidic. 28 Many acidic foods—like ceviche, since it contains lime juice—can react with untreated surfaces like cast-iron, unlined copper, and aluminum, giving the food a metallic taste.

Discardia: More Life, Less Stuff
by Dinah Sanders
Published 7 Oct 2011

Weigh the satisfaction you achieve after 30 minutes at easy versus hard and go for that which leaves you the jolliest. It's just like tossing a ball around in the yard instead of suiting up for a regulation football game. Who cares if you aren't playing it the tough way? Don't you get enough “tough” elsewhere in your life? Go have some dumb fun. (You know, happy dumb, not Darwin Awards dumb.) Take a break with a silly movie you love, watch cartoons, tell knock-knock jokes with little kids, or go drinking with a big gang of friends dressed in Santa outfits. Decorate cupcakes. Drive up to the outlook and neck in the backseat. Paint your toenails. Go bowling. Tiaras usually help.

The Genius Within: Unlocking Your Brain's Potential
by David Adam
Published 6 Feb 2018

While people with intellectual disability tend to be gullible and so act foolishly in social situations, allowing themselves to be duped and coerced by those who seek to take advantage, the stupid actions of the otherwise intelligent tend to be in practical domains and entered into voluntarily. Stories of people who found ingenious ways to accidentally hurt or kill themselves were a staple of the early internet years, and were codified as the Darwin Awards – awarded to people who remove their genes from the collective pool in an ‘extraordinarily idiotic manner’. This could be down to different personality types. Impulsive risk-takers are more likely to crash and burn than those who rarely stray from solid ground. Or it could be conventional ways to think about intelligence miss out a crucial ability – to think and behave rationally.

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything
by Kelly Weill
Published 22 Feb 2022

“Why aren’t they sending the ambulance?” the streamer called out. Stakes made it farther, all the way to the crash site. The rocket looked like a piece of crumpled aluminum foil. The internet’s response was swift and cruel. People shared videos of Hughes falling from the sky and joked that he deserved a Darwin Award, a sarcastic accolade for people who die in ridiculous ways. Hundreds of YouTube commenters made a joke about Hughes being a “flat” Flat Earther, as if they were any cleverer than he was, a bunch of anonymous sad sacks writing tired puns in the comments sections of snuff films. I had no patience for that shit.

Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry
by David Robertson and Bill Breen
Published 24 Jun 2013

Transforming LEGO The Rebirth of a Brand To make the LEGO brand vital again, you first need to transform the whole business system. —Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO, the LEGO Group LOOKING BACK AT THE LEGO OF THE LATE 1990S AND early 2000s, one can’t help but wonder whether it possessed the same genetic mutation as the winner of the 1995 Darwin Award, which annually commemorates those who, by killing themselves in spectacularly stupid ways, unintentionally demonstrate Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. That is, they enrich the human gene pool by removing themselves from it. Though later proved an urban legend, the story is irresistible: An amateur inventor attached a solid-fuel rocket engine to a Chevy Impala, motored out into the Arizona desert, and hit the accelerator.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
by Steven Pinker
Published 13 Feb 2018

[Even at play] children were in danger because of ponds, agricultural or industrial implements, stacks of timber, unattended boats and loaded wagons, all of which appear with depressing frequency in coroners’ reports as causes of death among the young.47 The Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society notes that “to modern audiences, the image of a sow devouring a baby, which appears in Chaucer’s ‘The Knight’s Tale,’ borders on the bizarre, but it almost certainly reflected the common threat that animals posed to children.”48 Adults were no safer. A Web site called Everyday Life and Fatal Hazard in Sixteenth-Century England (sometimes known as the Tudor Darwin Awards) posts monthly updates on the historians’ analyses of coroners’ reports. The causes of death include eating tainted mackerel, getting stuck while climbing through a window, being crushed by a stack of peat slabs, being strangled by a strap that hung baskets from one’s shoulders, plunging off a cliff while hunting cormorants, and falling onto one’s knife while slaughtering a pig.49 In the absence of artificial lighting, anyone who ventured out after dark faced the risk of drowning in wells, rivers, ditches, moats, canals, and cesspools.

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The annual rate of death in car crashes per 100,000 people is 57 in rich countries, 88 in poor countries (World Health Organization 2014, p. 10). 45. Bettmann 1974, pp. 22–23. 46. Scott 2010, pp. 18–19. 47. Rawcliffe 1998, p. 4, quoted in Scott 2010, pp. 18–19. 48. Tebeau 2016. 49. Tudor Darwin Awards: http://tudoraccidents.history.ox.ac.uk/. 50. The complete dataset for figure 12-6 shows a puzzling rise in deaths from falls starting in 1992, which is inconsistent with the fact that emergency treatments and hospital admissions for falls during this period showed no such rise (Hu & Baker 2012).

A Man for All Markets
by Edward O. Thorp
Published 15 Nov 2016

CHAPTER 2 surgical facilities The horrors of life in such camps is eloquently rendered in Three Came Home: A Woman’s Ordeal in a Japanese Prison Camp, by Agnes Keith, 1949, paperback 1985, Eland Books, London and Hippocrene Books, New York. was still running Edmund Scientific’s Scientifics 2000 Catalog for Science and Engineering Enthusiasts, page 31. several thousand feet See The Darwin Awards, Evolution in Action, “Lawnchair Larry,” pp. 280–81, by Wendy Northcutt, Plume (Penguin), New York, 2002. of these flares String soaked in potassium nitrate solution and dried. recipe and procedure About fifty years later, while listening to Ken Follett’s novel The Man From St. Petersburg, I noted that the terrorist antihero’s recipe and procedure for making nitroglycerine were consistent with how I made it as a boy in my mother’s refrigerator.

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
by Michael Shellenberger
Published 28 Jun 2020

“What I’m going to talk about tonight,” he said, “is a fundamental transformation of how the world works, about how energy is delivered across Earth. “This is how it is today—it’s pretty bad.” He showed a graph of rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. “I think we collectively should do something about this and not try to win the Darwin Award.” The crowd laughed and Elon smiled, before continuing. “We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky called the Sun. You don’t have to do anything, it just works. It shows up every day and produces ridiculous amounts of power.” Musk said there was no need to worry about land use requirements.

Sixty Days and Counting
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Published 27 Feb 2007

Hard cold was dangerous, as everyone had learned by now. The tabloids were rife with stories of people freezing in their cars at traffic lights, or on their front doorsteps trying to find the right key, or even in their own beds at night when an electric blanket failed. There were also regular Darwin Award winners out there, feeding the tabloids’ insatiable hunger for stupid disaster. Frank wondered if a time would come when people got enough disaster in their own lives that they would no longer feel a need to vampire onto others’ disasters. But it did not seem to have happened yet. Frank and Nick got back into a pattern in which Frank dropped by on Saturday mornings and off they would go, sipping from the steaming travel cups of coffee and hot chocolate Anna had provided.

The Dream Machine: The Untold History of the Notorious V-22 Osprey
by Richard Whittle
Published 26 Apr 2010

To Spivey’s horror, Meyer quickly posted it on his website: V-22 Article was Trash You must be a Sikorsky employee or a United Technologies stockholder. There are more mistakes and misrepresentations in this trash than I have seen in my 26 years with the Osprey program. You clearly don’t know what you are talking about. Good candidate for the Darwin Award. Dick Spivey Spivey felt like a fool right after he hit the “send” button. When he saw his e-mail posted on Meyer’s website, along with an invitation to point out the mistakes Spivey saw in the article, he felt even worse. Spivey knew he’d been dumb to lash out, but he was seeing red at the time.

Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima
by James Mahaffey
Published 15 Feb 2015

He would wait quietly here while the radiation supervisor checked it out with his instrument. Radiation supervisor left, reminding shift supervisor not to move. 180 We may never know his name, but the night shift supervisor at the Mayak plutonium extraction building was awarded the not-coveted 1994 Darwin Award. The Darwin is given to that individual who has taken his or her (usually his) self out of the gene pool by doing something really stupid, therefore proving that evolution works by not allowing people who should not reproduce to do so. http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1994-25.html 181 The company wished to process Mixed OXide fuel (MOX), which is a combination of uranium and plutonium, derived from reprocessing spent power-reactor fuel.

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
by Steven Pinker
Published 1 Jan 2002

They maintain more eye contact, and smile and laugh far more often.34 Men are more likely to compete with one another for status using violence or occupational achievement, women more likely to use derogation and other forms of verbal aggression. Men have a higher tolerance for pain and a greater willingness to risk life and limb for status, attention, and other dubious rewards. The Darwin Awards, given annually to “the individuals who ensure the long-term survival of our species by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion,” almost always go to men. Recent honorees include the man who squashed himself under a Coke machine after tipping it forward to get a free can, three men who competed over who could stomp the hardest on an anti-tank mine, and the would-be pilot who tied weather balloons to his lawn chair, shot two miles into the air, and drifted out to sea (earning just an Honorable Mention because he was rescued by helicopter).

Central America
by Carolyn McCarthy , Greg Benchwick , Joshua Samuel Brown , Alex Egerton , Matthew Firestone , Kevin Raub , Tom Spurling and Lucas Vidgen
Published 2 Jan 2001

WATERFALL A 40-minute river hike leads to a waterfall with a delicious swimming hole. As you head south past Restaurante LaCascada, take the trail to the right just after the bridge. It starts left of the river, crosses and continues on the right. Do not jump the falls – it’s the fast-track to a Darwin award. A smaller set of falls is further upriver. Tours Tour operators rent everything from snorkeling gear and body boards to bikes. Recommended tour operators: Cocozuma Traveller ( 2642-0911; www.cocozumacr.com; 24hr) Montezuma EcoTours ( 2642-0467; 8am-9pm) Zuma Tours ( 2642-0024; www.zumatours.net; 24hr) Sleeping Camping is illegal on the beaches.