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Darwin Awards Thread

smartcooky said:
Hold the phone, close the entries. I think we have just found the Darwin Award winner for 2020

https://www.sbsun.com/2020/02/22/da...s-reported-dead-in-rocket-crash-near-barstow/

This the Flat Earther who built a steam powered rocket so that he could launch himself up to the Kármán line to prove the earth was flat.

Many here predicted that this was always going to end badly and it has.


ETA: conspiracy theory that NASA MiB's sabotaged the parachute in 3....2....1....
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He's ineligible, having reproduced.
 
JoeMorgue said:
"The Flat Earthist realized as he flew through the skies
The curve of the horizon as he fell
He saw the world was round, just before he hit the ground
And gravity called out to close the deal"

- The Drive By Truckers "Thoughts and Prayers"
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Eerily prophetic. Those guys were interviewed about the new album at the start of Reliable Sources podcast yesterday.
 
curious cat said:
Don't you know airlines lie to you about the height they are flying at? Can you really trust what you see thru the window in the age of flat screens and HR? If you fly in your own rocket at least you can be sure all is real. :D
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This proves that you can't trust what you see through a window.

 
catsmate said:
He's ineligible, having reproduced.
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Nope, having offspring does not disqualify.

From the official Darwin Awards site:

The existence of offspring, though potentially deleterious to the gene pool, does not disqualify a nominee. Children inherit only half of each parent's genetic material and thus have their own chance to survive or snuff themselves. If, for instance, the offspring has inherited the "Play With Combustibles" gene, but also has inherited the "Use Caution When..." gene, then she is a potential innovator and asset to the human race. Therefore, each nominee is judged based on whether or not she has removed her own genes, without consideration to the number of offspring or, in the case of an elderly winner, the likelihood of producing more offspring.
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SO this guy is eligible, and right now a heavy favorite to win. It will be a banner year for human idiocy if somebody manages to off himself in a even stupider way.though that is not a impossibility.
 
dudalb said:
SO this guy is eligible, and right now a heavy favorite to win. It will be a banner year for human idiocy if somebody manages to off himself in a even stupider way.though that is not a impossibility.
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Hold my beer phone.

This bloke is surely more deserving of the Darwin of 2020 Award:

Age 27, lots of breeding potential
Died for a stupid goddamned phone
At least the flat earth guy died trying to something. Idiotic; sure, but built a rocket, which is a good effort.
Bonus point for "Clinton River"

https://www.mlive.com/news/2020/02/...into-clinton-river-to-retrieve-his-phone.html
 
I dunno, man... Between

A) some guy who does some dumb thing on impulse, before their brain has time to kick into gear (e.g., ****, I dropped my phone, need to get it back)

and

B) a guy who spends several months working on something extremely stupid, ignoring all the comments he must have gotten in the meantime about why it's stupid, and even disregards his own first hand evidence that the first time around their home made parachute got shredded...

Pretty sure I'd vote for B as having done the gene pool the biggest service by removing himself from it.

I mean, even smart people occasionally do something dumb on impulse, by not taking a few seconds to think it through. But someone who did put a lot of effort over a long time span into thinking it through, and still came up and went through with something extremely stupid, well, I think that they pretty much proved beyond any reasonable doubt that that IS their intellectual level. If the charge was having a working brain, no jury would find them guilty ;)
 
HansMustermann said:
I dunno, man... Between

A) some guy who does some dumb thing on impulse, before their brain has time to kick into gear (e.g., ****, I dropped my phone, need to get it back)

and

B) a guy who spends several months working on something extremely stupid, ignoring all the comments he must have gotten in the meantime about why it's stupid, and even disregards his own first hand evidence that the first time around their home made parachute got shredded...

Pretty sure I'd vote for B as having done the gene pool the biggest service by removing himself from it.

I mean, even smart people occasionally do something dumb on impulse, by not taking a few seconds to think it through. But someone who did put a lot of effort over a long time span into thinking it through, and still came up and went through with something extremely stupid, well, I think that they pretty much proved beyond any reasonable doubt that that IS their intellectual level. If the charge was having a working brain, no jury would find them guilty ;)
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Race car drivers. High wire walkers. All of the Evil Knievel types. Cave divers. Trapeze artists. Free rock climbers. Monster truck builders ... etc. etc..

What distinguishes these people from real Darwin Award types?

I think it is exactly the sort of thing you are condemning this guy for. They spend hundreds of hours studying, working, and training for whatever stunt or accomplishment happens to be their goal. Their goal may be questionable, even dangerous, but they made serious efforts to minimize the problems.

That is also exactly what the Darwin Award types don't do.Their;s is a "Hold my beer." mentality. Actions without considering the consequences.

Hughes may not have been successful in evaluating his precautions. But he worked hard to try to be.

He doesn't fit in my Darwin Award mold.
 
I disagree. Sure, race drivers and cavers and whatnot take risks and know it, hoping for excitement, thrill, and fame, but they also are distinguished from Hughes by understanding what those risks are and what their chances of success are. Hughes took precautions but they were stupid, inadequate ones inconsistent with reality or experience. I think I would be inclined to magnify his Darwin chances thereby, because unlike all of us who have occasionally done something thoughtlessly stupid, his stupidity was florid, complicated, and diligent.
 
bruto said:
I disagree. Sure, race drivers and cavers and whatnot take risks and know it, hoping for excitement, thrill, and fame, but they also are distinguished from Hughes by understanding what those risks are and what their chances of success are. Hughes took precautions but they were stupid, inadequate ones inconsistent with reality or experience. I think I would be inclined to magnify his Darwin chances thereby, because unlike all of us who have occasionally done something thoughtlessly stupid, his stupidity was florid, complicated, and diligent.
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Race Drivers, etc are professionals, who take every possible precaution because they know how dangerous what they doing is.
Hughes was a total, inept amateur.
Most dangerous thing in the world is an amateur who thinks he is a professional. Hughes qualifies.
 
Professional race car drivers are also backed by a very large team of engineers, mechanics and safety experts cross a wide range of disciplines.

And as for rocket science, just take a look at what organisations like NASA*, SpaceX and Blue Origin do... they test, then test again, then test again. They push their testing beyond the design limits of the equipment, deliberately testing to destruction so that they know the failure points. They explore all the possible failure modes, and the unlikely failure modes, and even ones they think will be impossible. They test so that they fail in testing and not in flight. Hughes did little if any of the above.


(*NOTE: It was the failure to understand the seriousness of a potential failure mode that led to the Colombia disaster, and the ignoring of a known failure mode that led to the Challenger disaster.)
 
quadraginta said:
Race car drivers. High wire walkers. All of the Evil Knievel types. Cave divers. Trapeze artists. Free rock climbers. Monster truck builders ... etc. etc..

What distinguishes these people from real Darwin Award types?

I think it is exactly the sort of thing you are condemning this guy for. They spend hundreds of hours studying, working, and training for whatever stunt or accomplishment happens to be their goal. Their goal may be questionable, even dangerous, but they made serious efforts to minimize the problems.
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Note that I didn't say that he deserves one for doing something dangerous, but for doing something bloody stonking stupid even after having all the time in the world to think it through. Unlike a "hold my beer" type who might or might not have realized how stupid the action was, if he only took two minutes to think it through instead of acting on impulse, this guy did think it through for years and still came up with something bloody stupid.

And there you actually make my point. You have people who actually STUDY how to do that kind of stuff safer, and then we have a guy who explicitly didn't believe in science, i.e., in studying what was known already about his chosen field, and couldn't learn even from his own previous failure.

If you want an analogy with those other fields you've chosen in your example, it's like having a mountain climber who doesn't believe in studying how it's done, makes his own rope, it breaks on a previous attempt and he barely survives, does the same thing with a higher mountain, and it breaks again.
 
The Atheist said:
Hold my beer phone.

This bloke is surely more deserving of the Darwin of 2020 Award:

Age 27, lots of breeding potential
Died for a stupid goddamned phone
At least the flat earth guy died trying to something. Idiotic; sure, but built a rocket, which is a good effort.
Bonus point for "Clinton River"

https://www.mlive.com/news/2020/02/...into-clinton-river-to-retrieve-his-phone.html
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It does not say what sort of phone it was. But really he should have known if you get into very cold water you have only a very small time to get out again and into dry clothing or you are dead.
 
rjh01 said:
It does not say what sort of phone it was.
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Does it matter?

I wouldn't have gone into freezing water for a satellite phone that cooked pizza and had a dozen hookers hidden in it serving never-ending single malt scotch.
 
dudalb said:
Hughes was a total, inept amateur.
Most dangerous thing in the world is an amateur who thinks he is a professional. Hughes qualifies.
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I have been sort of trying to have my cake and eat it, too.

While I have tried not to directly disparage Hughes, I am comfortable saying things like he was offered assistance from people who would have helped him build a safer and better rocket, but he insisted on trusting his own instincts even though he had little experience in the field. Rocketry is an endeavor where practical experience is often as important as knowledge of the subject and he had neither.

I will let you draw your own conclusions.
 
jadebox said:
I have been sort of trying to have my cake and eat it, too.

While I have tried not to directly disparage Hughes, I am comfortable saying things like he was offered assistance from people who would have helped him build a safer and better rocket, but he insisted on trusting his own instincts even though he had little experience in the field. Rocketry is an endeavor where practical experience is often as important as knowledge of the subject and he had neither.

I will let you draw your own conclusions.
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When we say someone is no rocket scientist, he provides a - well, we can't say living and breathing, but at least real - object lesson.
 
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