Darwin Awards
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A Darwin Award is a tongue-in-cheek honor given to people who purportedly improve the human gene pool by removing themselves from it following an episode of questionable judgment. The prizes, named after pioneering evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin, are awarded over the Internet. There is no monetary prize, only recognition.
To take the premise of the Darwin Award seriously is to suppose that stupidity, of a kind that leads to one's own death, is wholly or partially determined by genetics. The recipients of the award are said to come from the 'shallow end of the gene pool'.
To qualify, one must die (or render oneself incapable of reproducing) in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, such as juggling hand grenades (Croatia, 2001[link]), jumping out of a plane to film skydivers while forgetting to wear a parachute oneself (USA, 1987[link]), trying to get enough light to look down a gun barrel using a cigarette lighter (USA, 1996 [link]), cutting off one's own head with a chainsaw in a macho-contest (Poland, 1996[link]), using a lighter to illuminate a fuel tank to make sure it contains nothing flammable (Brazil, 2003[link]), or heating a lava lamp on a gas stove (USA, 2004[link]). While most Darwin winners are awarded posthumously, self-sterilization is also sufficient, such as the man who had sexual intercourse with a vacuum cleaner (USA, 2000[link]).
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 hit by a train while trying to see how close to the train one could safely place one's head (USA, 1995[link]), and people petting sharks during a feeding frenzy on a dead whale (Australia, 2001[link]).
Personal Accounts fit most of the requirements for a Darwin Award or Honorable Mention, but cannot be independently verified. Awardees in this category are often submitted, for example, by medical professionals who cannot disclose the identity of the people that they encounter in the line of duty. [link]
While a few Darwin Awards circulated via email for some time, the Awards were added to and popularized by webmistress Wendy Northcutt, also known as Darwin. Her site, www.DarwinAwards.com ([link]), is by far the best known of the Darwin Award sites.
Rules
Requirements
For purposes of her work, Wendy Northcutt has established the five requirements for a Darwin Award as follows:
- Inability to reproduce - Nominee must be dead or sterile.
- :Sometimes this can be a matter of dispute. Potential awardees may be out of the gene pool due to age; others have already reproduced prior to their inept death. To avoid debates about the possibility of in-vitro fertilization, artificial insemination or cloning, the original Darwin Awards book applied the following "deserted island" test to potential winners: If the person would be unable to reproduce when stranded on a desert island with a fertile member of the opposite sex, they are considered sterile.
- Excellence - Astounding misapplication of judgment.
- :The candidate's idiocy must be unique and sensational. A number of commonly stupid activities (smoking in bed, urinating 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 tragic. But if someone is hit by an I-beam that he rigged above his own balcony to kill pigeons, then he would be eligible for a Darwin Award. Equally eligible is the lawyer who rammed against a high-story window in order to demonstrate its "strength."[link]
- :There is no award for taking someone else out of the gene pool.
- 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, but particularly amusing ones are placed in a section of the archives entitled "urban legends".[link]
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.
- Certain forms of carelessness with flammable liquids
- Plain alcohol poisoning. Alcohol consumption, on the other hand, plays a key role in many Darwin Awards.
- Deliberate and willful acts; doing it on purpose steps from Darwin Award to insanity.
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.
Books
Four books of stories have been published. Although the first was a New York Times bestseller, the others have met with mixed success.- 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 0525949607
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. Some stories depicted in the movie do not observe the rules.Ethical reservations
[In an interview with CNN], Wendy Northcutt, an avid Darwin Award fan stated that reservations over child cases caused controversy. She stated, "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." This has not prevented Wendy Northcutt from continuing to include real names at times in the archives of embarrassing deaths.External links
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