darwin awards

por CalaveraDeFidel Lun Oct 17, 2011 8:06 pm

It's
that time again ... The Darwin Awards are out! These Annual Honors are
given to the persons who did the human gene pool the biggest service by
killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way.

You
may recall that 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.

This year's winner was a genuine Rocket Scientist ... no jive! Read on .... The nominees were:

Semifinalist #1

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. The resulting explosion and fire burned
his house down, killing both him and his sister.

Semifinalist #2

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.

Semifinalist #3

A 22-year-old Reston ,
VA man was found dead after he tried to use octopus straps to bungee
jump off a 70-foot rail road trestle. Fairfax County police said Eric
Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together,
wrapped an 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 had assembled was
greater than the distance between the trestle and the concrete,"
Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of
death was "Major trauma."

Semifinalist #4

A man in
Alabama died from numerous 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, but lived.

Semifinalist #5

Employees in a
medium-sized 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. The technician suspected of causing the blast had never been
thought of as ''especially bright'' by his peers.

And now the winner of this year's Darwin Award; as always, awarded posthumously;

THE 2011 WINNER!

Arizona
Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering metal embedded in the
side of a cliff rising above the road at the apex of a curve. The
wreckage resembled the site of an airplane crash, but it was a car. The
type of car was unidentifiable at the scene.

Police
investigators finally pieced together the mystery. An amateur rocket
scientist had somehow gotten hold of a JATO unit (Jet Assisted Take
Off...actually a solid-fuel rocket) that is used to give heavy military
transport planes an extra 'push' for taking off from short airfields. He
had driven his
Chevy Impala out into the desert and found a long, straight stretch of
road. He attached the JATO unit to the car, jumped in, got up some speed
and fired off the JATO!

The facts as best could be determined
are that the operator of the 1967 Impala hit the JATO ignition at a
distance of approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This was
established by the scorched and melted asphalt at that location.

The
JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum thrust within 5
seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well in excess of 350 mph
and continuing at full power for an additional 20 -25 seconds.

The
driver, and soon-to-be pilot, would have experienced G-forces usually
reserved for dog fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, causing
him to become irrelevant for the remainder of the event. However, the
automobile remained on the straight highway for about 2.5 miles (15-20
seconds) before the driver applied
and completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick
rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an
additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of 125
feet, leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock. Most of the
driver's remains were not recoverable.

Epilogue: It has been
calculated that this moron attained a ground speed of approximately
420-mph, though much of his voyage was not actually on the ground.

Really.....we couldn't make this stuff up.
People like these are all around us. They have kids and they vote!