OT Humour - Darwin Awards

[MartinM]

The Long awaited 2004 DARWIN AWARDS..............

Yes, these are all true. They are finally out again. It's an annual
honour given to the person who did the gene pool the biggest service by
killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way. Last year's
winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which toppled
over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out of it.

So, the nominees this year in reverse order are:

6. A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply,
because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with
milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited
into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire
burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.

5. Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude
when another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the
occupants of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and
crashed. They were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants
around their ankles.

4. A 22-year-old,Glade Drive, Reston,VA, man was found dead after he
tried to use octopus straps to bungee-jump off a 70-foot railroad
trestle. Fairfax County police said Eric Barcia, a fast-food worker,
taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped one end around one foot,
anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped, and
hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said
investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby
"The length of the cord that he assembled was greater than the distance
between the trestle and the ground, "Carmichael said. Police say the
apparent cause of death was "major trauma."

3. A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a
friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball.
The friend, no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate, was hospitalized.

2. Employees in a medium-size warehouse in West Texas noticed the smell
of a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building,
extinguishing all potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc.
After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas
company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had
difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the
lights worked. Witnesses later described the sight of one of the
technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that
resembled a cigarette lighter. Upon operation of the lighter-like
object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to
three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter
was virtually untouched by the explosion. His peers had never thought of
the technician suspected of causing the blast as "bright".

AND THE WINNER IS....

1. Based on a bet by the other members of his threesome, Everitt Sanchez
tried to wash his own "balls" in a ball-washer at the local golf course.
Proving once again that beer and testosterone are a bad mix, Sanchez
managed to straddle the ball washer and dangle his scrotum in the
machine. Much to his dismay, one of his buddies upped the ante by
spinning the crank on the machine with Sanchez's scrotum in place,
wedging it solidly in the mechanism. Sanchez, who immediately passed his
threshold of pain, collapsed and tumbled from his perch. Unfortunately
for him, the ball washer was more than a foot higher off the ground than
his testicles are in a normal stance, and the scrotum was the weakest
link.
Sanchez's scrotum was ripped open during the fall. One testicle was
plucked from him forever and remained in the ball washer, while the
other testicle was compressed and flattened as it was pulled between the
housing of the washer and the rotating machinery inside. To add insult
to injury, Sanchez broke a new $300 driver that he had just purchased
from the pro shop and was using to balance himself. Sanchez was rushed
to the hospital for surgery, and the remaining, er, members of the
threesome were asked to leave the course. This last one wouldn't
normally count, because the idiot didn't die. But because he cannot
reproduce as a result of his qualifying act of stupidity, we have
allowed it.

 

[Ambrose Nankivell]

[email protected] (MartinM) writes:

> The Long awaited 2004 DARWIN AWARDS..............
>
> Yes, these are all true. They are finally out again. It's an annual
> honour given to the person who did the gene pool the biggest service by
> killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way.

How about having Darwin Awards for the person who contributes to the
gene pool in the most significant way, i.e. stupendously successful
people who manage to have lots of well adjusted children who
contribute to human endeavour in the most positive way? After all,
that's a bigger bonus to society than all the attendant costs of
losing people to pointless accidents.

A

 

[Mark Tranchant]

Ambrose Nankivell wrote:

> How about having Darwin Awards for the person who contributes to the
> gene pool in the most significant way, i.e. stupendously successful
> people who manage to have lots of well adjusted children who
> contribute to human endeavour in the most positive way? After all,
> that's a bigger bonus to society than all the attendant costs of
> losing people to pointless accidents.

Yeah, and people would prefer to read about that...

--
Mark.

 

[Ambrose Nankivell]

Mark Tranchant <[email protected]> writes:

> Ambrose Nankivell wrote:
>
> > How about having Darwin Awards for the person who contributes to the
> > gene pool in the most significant way, i.e. stupendously successful
> > people who manage to have lots of well adjusted children who
> > contribute to human endeavour in the most positive way? After all,
> > that's a bigger bonus to society than all the attendant costs of
> > losing people to pointless accidents.
>
> Yeah, and people would prefer to read about that...

Of course not. But the vicious smugness of the current Darwin Awards
really annoys me.

A

 

[soup]

MartinM popped their head over the parapet saw what was going on and
said
> The Long awaited 2004 DARWIN AWARDS..............
>
> Yes, these are all true> AND THE WINNER IS....
>
> 1. Based on a bet by the other members of his threesome, Everitt
> Sanchez tried to wash his own "balls" in a ball-washer at the local
> golf course. Proving once again that beer and testosterone are a bad
> mix,

<snip word for word tale of woe>

Probably not true.

http://www.snopes.com/humor/follies/ballwash.htm

--
yours S
addy not usable (not that you would try it)
Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione

 

[Mark Thompson]

> Probably not true.
>
> http://www.snopes.com/humor/follies/ballwash.htm

While we're at it I read the lighter one several years ago, possibly in the
Fortean Times Strange Deaths column, so I doubt that's true either. I
always wondered who it was in the building that saw him get the lighter out
of his pocket.

 

[Nick Kew]

In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] (MartinM) writes:

> 6. A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply,
> because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with
> milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited
> into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire
> burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.

OK, so public safety requires that we ensure petrol costs at least as
much as booze. Mr Brown, are you listening?

--
Nick Kew

 

[Sue]

In message <[email protected]>, Mark
Thompson <[email protected]> writes
>> Probably not true.
>
>While we're at it I read the lighter one several years ago, possibly in the
>Fortean Times Strange Deaths column, so I doubt that's true either. I
>always wondered who it was in the building that saw him get the lighter out
>of his pocket.

Explosions can have odd damage patterns.

During the First World War, in a munitions factory at Limehouse in East
London [1] a foreman saw a workman using a cold chisel to scrape spilt
nitroglycerine off the concrete floor. This was so dangerous that the
shocked foreman sacked the worker on the spot.
The worker reacted by throwing the chisel into the pool of
nitroglycerine, causing an explosion that was still London folklore in
the 1980s. The witness who watched this was standing in the doorway of
the shed; he was blown an impressive distance by the blast but escaped
serious injury.
My grandmother heard and felt the explosion from the City, and she said
it seemed much nearer than it was.

Also Google for details of the Soham explosion (more munitions, this
time in a burning train in WW2) where a witness survived.

[1] Limehouse still looked blast-flattened when I last saw it.

--
Sue ];)

 

[MartinM]

[email protected] (Nick Kew) wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> In article <[email protected]>,
> [email protected] (MartinM) writes:
>
> > 6. A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply,
> > because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with
> > milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited
> > into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire
> > burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.
>
> OK, so public safety requires that we ensure petrol costs at least as
> much as booze. Mr Brown, are you listening?

Would that put off Mr Withnail?

 

[Pyromancer]

Upon the miasma of midnight, a darkling spirit identified as Sue
<[email protected]> breathed:

>In message <[email protected]>, Mark
>Thompson <[email protected]> writes
>>> Probably not true.

>>While we're at it I read the lighter one several years ago, possibly in the
>>Fortean Times Strange Deaths column, so I doubt that's true either. I
>>always wondered who it was in the building that saw him get the lighter out
>>of his pocket.

>Explosions can have odd damage patterns.

<snip>

Indeed. IIRC when a petrol tanker exploded on (I think) a coast road in
the Algarve, right beside a holiday park, in one case a large motor
caravan and all its occupants were reduced to ash yet a caged bird which
had been next to the caravan escaped unscathed.

--
- Pyromancer.
- http://www.inkubus-sukkubus.co.uk <-- Pagan Gothic Rock!
- http://www.littlematchgirl.co.uk <-- Electronic Metal!
- http://www.revival.stormshadow.com <-- The Gothic Revival.

 

[Chris Malcolm]

Mark Thompson <[email protected]> writes:

>> Probably not true.
>>
>> http://www.snopes.com/humor/follies/ballwash.htm

>While we're at it I read the lighter one several years ago, possibly in the
>Fortean Times Strange Deaths column, so I doubt that's true either. I
>always wondered who it was in the building that saw him get the lighter out
>of his pocket.

About 20 years ago there was a huge explosion in a small shopping
centre in Glasgow, which destroyed a number of shops, and made the
overpass under which the shops had been constructed too unsafe for
traffic. There had earlier been complaints to the gas board about a
smell of gas in the locality. A shopkeeper remembered lending a candle
stump to a workman whom another wtiness was able to identify as one
of the investigating team from the gas board, and a third witness
remembered seeing them going down a manhole.

It's actually a very common kind of accident.
--
Chris Malcolm [email protected] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

 

[Sue]

In message <[email protected]>, MartinM
<[email protected]> writes
>[email protected] (Nick Kew) wrote in message
>news:<[email protected]>...
>> In article <[email protected]>,
>> [email protected] (MartinM) writes:
>>
>> > 6. A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply,
>> > because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with
>> > milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited
>> > into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire
>> > burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.
>>
>> OK, so public safety requires that we ensure petrol costs at least as
>> much as booze. Mr Brown, are you listening?
>
>Would that put off Mr Withnail?

I read recently that discoveries of new oilfields have now completely
ceased, they've all been found. And that since the oil companies know
this, they'll husband their resources while the price goes up, rather
than increase production to match demand from an ever-thirstier world
economy.

Anyone care to guess when petrol gets to cost more than whisky?

--
Sue ]8)

 

[Mark Thompson]

> I read recently that discoveries of new oilfields have now completely
> ceased, they've all been found. And that since the oil companies know
> this, they'll husband their resources while the price goes up, rather
> than increase production to match demand from an ever-thirstier world
> economy.

Fortunately that's complete bollocks. Where'd you read it?

 

[cfsmtb]

> I read recently that discoveries of new oilfields have now completely
> ceased, they've all been found. And that since the oil companies know
> this, they'll husband their resources while the price goes up, rather
> than increase production to match demand from an ever-thirstier world
> economy.

Fortunately that's complete bollocks. Where'd you read it?

Maybe it is, but type in "Peak Oil" into a search engine & witness what crops up onto your screen.

 

[Sue]

In message <[email protected]>, cfsmtb
<[email protected]> writes
>
>Maybe it is, but type in "Peak Oil" into a search engine & witness what
>crops up onto your screen.

I don't see why that would be the End of Suburbia, couldn't the
suburbanites just get bicycles?

Oh no - I've drifted an OT thread on-topic! I'll get me bike...

--
Sue ];)

 

[Gawnsoft]

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 23:26:56 +0100, Sue <[email protected]> wrote
(more or less):
....
>I read recently that discoveries of new oilfields have now completely
>ceased, they've all been found.

They're still finding them. But the typical big find of today tends
to be about 1/3 to 1/4 the size of the big finds of decades back.

>And that since the oil companies know
>this, they'll husband their resources while the price goes up, rather
>than increase production to match demand from an ever-thirstier world
>economy.

The world economy is getting thirstier, but there's almost no spare
production capacity in the world. Saudi Arabia has the only
significant production capacity that's not in operation. (equivalent
to about 3% or global capacity). The USA is leaning on them to get it
into operation to lower current prices.

>Anyone care to guess when petrol gets to cost more than whisky?

Most of the cost of whisky is tax...


--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk) http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk

 

[Mark Thompson]

> The world economy is getting thirstier, but there's almost no spare
> production capacity in the world. Saudi Arabia has the only
> significant production capacity that's not in operation. (equivalent
> to about 3% or global capacity). The USA is leaning on them to get it
> into operation to lower current prices.

I'd hazard a guess that this low level is mostly due to spare capacity
being expensive to maintain and rather pointless from the point of view of
the people that pay for it (oil companies).

This is pure uninformed speculation, but I assume the only reasons for
Saudi Arabia having signficant spare capacity is to be able to threaten its
use against countries that would otherwise stick two fingers up at the OPEC
cartel, to help keep oil prices stable, and to keep the Americans
interested in a nice, secure and benevolent kind of way. This (and the
ludicrous amount of oil they've got) makes it feasible for Saudi to have
this huge level of spare capacity.

But as I say, I don't really know much about this topic so the above is
possibly all nonsense. Maybe if we crossposted to the motoring lot we'd
get a more informed answer

 

[Jon Senior]

In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] says...
> Of course not. But the vicious smugness of the current Darwin Awards
> really annoys me.

I can see your point, but I'm definately a fan. I think that mankind as
a species opted-out of natural selection some time ago, so it's always
good to see individuals who are determined to redress the balance.

Jon

 

[Sue]

In message <[email protected]>, Mark
Thompson <[email protected]> writes
>
>But as I say, I don't really know much about this topic so the above is
>possibly all nonsense. Maybe if we crossposted to the motoring lot we'd
>get a more informed answer

You probably know more than you think. Oil forms when ancient swamps
get buried deep enough but not too deep, and accumulates only if the
first part happens under a suitable geological lid that'll keep it from
surfacing (it floats on water).
Only a limited number of places have ancient swamps with convenient
domes or faults over them, and it's certain that most have already been
found.

Three-fifths of the world is deep ocean crust, which can't form oil that
we know of.
Most of the rest has no suitable sediments - for instance, it's been
conclusively proved that there can't be oil under Basingstoke.

It's not hard to identify possible oil-trapping formations if you can
get access to the area, but the smaller they are the more detailed your
mapping has to be. So the big ones get found first. Then, you drill
into them and find a lovely dome formation with nothing underneath
that's ever been swampy, or with cracks in that've let all the oil out.
Even oilfields in places like Chechnya (a persistent trouble spot) and
the Arctic (well inhospitable climatically) are already being exploited.

It won't last forever, the question is when and how fast the supply will
dry up.
--
Sue ];)

 

[Gawnsoft]

On 26 Jul 2004 09:13:26 GMT, Mark Thompson
<[email protected]> wrote (more or less):

>> The world economy is getting thirstier, but there's almost no spare
>> production capacity in the world. Saudi Arabia has the only
>> significant production capacity that's not in operation. (equivalent
>> to about 3% or global capacity). The USA is leaning on them to get it
>> into operation to lower current prices.
>
>I'd hazard a guess that this low level is mostly due to spare capacity
>being expensive to maintain and rather pointless from the point of view of
>the people that pay for it (oil companies).
>
>This is pure uninformed speculation, but I assume the only reasons for
>Saudi Arabia having signficant spare capacity is to be able to threaten its
>use against countries that would otherwise stick two fingers up at the OPEC
>cartel, to help keep oil prices stable, and to keep the Americans
>interested in a nice, secure and benevolent kind of way. This (and the
>ludicrous amount of oil they've got) makes it feasible for Saudi to have
>this huge level of spare capacity.

That and the fact that Saudi Arabia's production capacity is 100%
government-owned, so policy and commerce remain tightly coupled in a
way that is different to say, the USA - where it can be argued that
government is 80% owned by the production capacity

>
>But as I say, I don't really know much about this topic so the above is
>possibly all nonsense. Maybe if we crossposted to the motoring lot we'd
>get a more informed answer

--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk) http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk