The Darwin Awards for 2006

Charles Darwin, yo!These are the most popular nominations, by public vote, for the year’s best examples of removing yourself from a grateful gene pool by sheer force of your own innate (or learned) stupidity. Interestingly, the overwhelming winner is contentious enough that they are considering removing the category altogether; it seems that there are quite a lot of people who believe strongly that pounding on RPGs with a sledgehammer or rolling an unexploded bomb downhill is not stupid behavior if the alternative is poverty. In these cases, however, the alternative was a life in poverty, which is surely the smart choice under these or, indeed, any circumstances.

Seriously, people, economic imperatives only override physical ones when the intellect fails; this is why they are called the Darwin Awards. You can’t provide for your family if you blowed yourself up real good; species who favour food which is poisonous to them tend to die out. Simple.

Donald Trump or Stephen Harper, feel free to disagree and to take your disagreement to the nearest RPG or bomb on the top of a hill.

Stories Ranked by Vote

Hammer of Doom 8.0 (2421 votes)

Stubbed Out 7.8 (1838 votes)

Star Wars 7.8 (1664 votes)

High on Life 7.7 (1423 votes)

Score For Goliath 7.3 (2150 votes)

Copper Kite 7.3 (1006 votes)

Faithful Flotation 7.2 (1804 votes)

Technical Difficulties 5.9 (46 votes)

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9 thoughts on “The Darwin Awards for 2006

  1. The goofy thing is that the Darwin Awards do not exclude anyone who has had children. So, those people have not removed their genes from the gene pool. I just looked this up on their site the other day.

  2. An interesting point. Maybe they are thinking of the children these people could have GONE ON to have?

    Or maybe they should start a special category for people like that who manage to take their whole gene pool with them.

  3. You don’t trust Snopes but you like the DA’s?

    “I am 14, and I know this story is true” gets an award?

    In grotesque self-parody, the Darwin Awards leapt the shark about five years ago. However they received an honourable mention because they did it without a net.

  4. Did I say they were true? They’re sourced, so you have to apply your intelligence to evaluate the authority of the sources; is that one step too far for you, Metro?

    Whereas certain people, yourself included, assume if it’s on Snopes it’s untrue. The fact that some airborne item is unidentified makes it an unidentified flying object; that doesn’t make it an alien spaceship. Again, is this one step too far for you?

  5. Ah Raincoaster darling. Where would you be if all stories that hit the ‘net were well-researched and factual?

    Stone out of material for a start, eh?

    And you’re drawing a false parallel. Darmin simply presents any old thing that strikes their fancy and says “Hey looka this!” without supplying any context beyond the source, hence their continual quoting of “reputable” news sources that have been sucked into the first wave. Snopes presents the item concerned in its proper context.

    The question is not whether it is an unidentified flying object, but whether it is in fact unidentified. Usually it turns out to be plover. Surely only a simpleton could have messed up the analogy?

    Obviously your keyboard stuck in exactly the right way …

  6. Darmin? What have you been drinking, and why haven’t you saved some of it for me? Come back and post when you can handle both booze and logic. Until then, you know where to find newmania’s blog, don’t you?

  7. Obviously my keyboard stuck in exactly the right way.

    As far as logic–you are referring to this blog right here, no? Personally I was beginning to think that there was no such person as “Raincoaster” and that the entire place was run on the “computer-simulation-of-an-infinite-number-of-monkeys” plan.

    I’m happy to have you prove me wrong for once.

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