The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction (37 page)

Yes, we have been wrong and wronger, more than once and more than twice. But we aren’t afraid to say we were wrong. That’s why you can trust us. We continually
correct errors
and update the stories with new information, and you can always find the latest scoop on the Darwin Awards website.

Two hundred to four hundred submissions per month. A particularly inspirational story might be submitted hundreds of times. A recent avalanche was in April 2008, when a priest went aloft in a lawn chair tethered to hundreds of helium party balloons—and that was the last we saw of him for many months.

If votes were all that mattered, you would see more stories about poop and procreation. Put one or both of these in a story, and its score goes up. Grotesque stories also get a boost. We let the popular vote
guide
our preference—but not
rule
it.

Your vote has the most influence in choosing the best of the Slush, pointing out stories that need more polish, and picking the annual Winners.

Case example:
Wendy loved a story that kept getting votes. A Californian was working on a laptop
while driving;
he drifted over the centerline and was killed. Ha-ha! Ha? Bafflingly unpopular. She rewrote the story four times, trying to convey the humor, but still its score remained low. Minor injuries were suffered by the innocent; that can kill a nomination. In the end, she heeded your votes and removed it from consideration.

We often get enthusiastic pointers to evolution-about-to-happen, for example, crocodile-baiting teenage boys. When young men are being stupid just to garner attention, additional publicity will feed into and actually promote risk-taking. We draw the line at
encouraging
dangerous stupidity! But certainly croc-baiters (and so forth) are walking into the maw of natural selection.

The essays in this book were written by graduates of the science writing program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. This program has produced professional science writers since 1981. If you read major science magazines, go to science museums and aquaria, or listen to NPR, you’ve seen and heard their work. The essays in this book were written by Slugs, as the alumni of UCSC call themselves, and we are honored to share their exceptional work with you.

Wendy says, “I’m a Scientist! I live and breathe science.” The Darwin Awards are based on the scientific premise that humans are evolving. A large portion of our readers are college students, or first heard about the Darwin Awards whilst in college. The Science essays are relevant—often explaining advanced evolutionary concepts—and keep Scientist Wendy interested in her job. “Charles Darwin would be disappointed if I focused only on humor and failed to contribute to scientific knowledge,” says Wendy.

In 1993, Wendy began writing Darwin Award vignettes and gathering a wide audience by sending regular newsletters, encouraging submissions, and facilitating discussions and voting. Her hobby became a consuming passion, as the fans grew from hundreds to thousands, tens of thousands, millions . . .

Thanks to Wendy’s tireless efforts, today a Darwin Award is a worldwide symbol of stupidity.

Wendy writes the stories, but the Darwin Awards belong to all of us. The heart and soul of the Darwin Awards is our community.
All
the stories are available on the website, updated with facts, comments, and quips from readers. The Darwin Awards grows with your guidance. We prune stories when you convince us our judgment is flawed—if the deceased was the victim of a bizarre accident rather than his own bizarre judgment—or more subtle points such as whether the person is mentally incompetent (for example, “Saw It Coming! ” p. 202).

When Wendy began chronicling the Darwin Awards, there were only a few in existence. The first use of the term “Darwin Awards” is obscure. Usenet archives contains an August 1985 mention of the fellow crushed beneath a Coke machine while he was trying to shake loose a free can—true story! Five years later, an urban legend surfaced about a man who strapped a JATO rocket to his Chevy, turning it into a doomed aircraft. Wendy took over the helm of the Beagle and began writing the Darwin Awards in 1993; since then,
thousands of people have aspired to win a Darwin Award—
nine thousand submissions in the last three years alone.

Yes, Wendy is a woman. That makes the Darwin Awards a kinder, gentler place. She deals with flames sympathetically. She says NO! to racial stereotypes and just-plain-mean submissions. When community or family complain, she listens respectfully to their point of view. These discussions lead to facts being corrected; sometimes the story is removed, other times the family takes solace from knowing that their loss is at least a “safety lesson” to help others avoid the same mistake.

If a family writes to us, we take their concerns seriously. Sometimes we remove the story. We don’t want to cause anyone pain. Sometimes the family realizes that their loss has a little more meaning if it serves as a cautionary tale that might save someone else’s life. Often they even confide prior foolhardy things that the winner did.

Like an Irish wake, it can be healing to laugh while you grieve. That’s human nature.

Sometimes families write to share a memory. From a recent email:

“Many years ago my two uncles started roughhousing at our Christmas gathering. At one point Uncle Frank picked up Uncle John by the heels, lost his grip, and dropped Uncle John on his head. It was all right because John was a state supreme court justice and there for life. The other uncle is, I am sure, in your archive. The one about the skydiving photographer who forgot to put on a chute . . .”

You passed along your genes. You’re safe!

The broader question is whether a person with offspring has opted out of a Darwin Award. Our community engages in inconclusive discussions about what it means to be
out of the gene pool.
What if the winner has already reproduced? Obviously a winner with no kids is
more
“out of the gene pool” than one who leaves behind several ankle biters, so shouldn’t rug rats rule you out?

What about a vow of celibacy, is that an automatic win? What if the nominee has an identical twin, and his DNA is still running around trying to reproduce? How about old people who aren’t able to have any (more) kids—are the elderly disqualified? And the whole topic of cryogenics is troubling. Unbeknownst to us, have so-called winners left frozen sperm and eggs laying around? If cloning humans becomes feasible (it is already
possible
), Darwin Awards might cease to exist!