Search Salon

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Recently in Salon People

Brilliant Careers
Hugh Hefner
The 20th century's indefatigable swinger is still mixing martinis, cavorting with naked women, encouraging men to play indoors and reinventing himself.
By Chris Colin
[12/28/99]

People Feature
A conversation with Hugh Hefner
"A whole generation has grown up that was waiting for me to come out and play."
By Chris Colin
[12/28/99]

Nothing Personal
And now a word from our readers
Welcome to the First Annual Nothing Personal Readers' Choice Awards! Where you dish the gossip and I go on vacation!
By Amy Reiter
[12/24/99]

People Feature
Storm of the century
Rubin "Hurricane" Carter has lived a life of novelistic proportions. Unfortunately, the only fiction was the prosecutor's case.
By Frank Houston
[12/24/99]

Nothing Personal
Keith Richards: Like a thief in the night?
Evil Glimmer Twin makes off with fan's guitar; health poll: better to resemble Tina Turner than Calista Flockhart -- Doh! Plus: Joe Frazier's daughter to Muhammad Ali's daughter: Boom! boom! Out go the lights.
By Amy Reiter
[12/23/99]

Complete archives for People

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

For the fantasy to meet certain punitive goals, of course, a specific set of circumstances is required: The death should be untimely, exotic, romantic, preventable and tragically unfair. It is preferable for the demise not to occur with pants around ankles. Also, under no circumstances should the dearly departed make the nominee list for the Darwin Awards.

Awarded biannually to recipients now forever unable to collect statuettes in person, the Darwin Awards "commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives" by "eliminat[ing] themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chance of long-term survival."

Also Today They coulda been a contender Because they can't all be winners ...

Collected and verified by a Berkeley-educated molecular biologist (alias "Darwin") who went on to do research in neurobiology at Stanford (where she first heard the term "Darwin Awards"), the stories range from the sublimely ironic to the pathetically stupid. Most evince a taste for experimentation -- a kind of trial and (fatal) error -- that vividly illustrates the concept of "evolution in action."

This year's winner: "Living on Zionist Time," in which the switch away from daylight savings time turned the tables on a group of Palestinian terrorists who had neglected to note that Israel had made a premature switch from daylight savings time to standard time due to a religious holiday. The bombs had been prepared in a Palestine-controlled area, and set on Daylight Savings time. The drivers had already switched to standard time, and the cars were still en-route when the explosives detonated.

And the runner-up: "Firefighters Ignite!" Seven firefighters decided to impress their chief by setting fire to a house, then heroically extinguishing the blaze. The men apparently hatched the plan in order to help a formerly fire-fighting friend return to duty. Unfortunately, the friend's career plans were irreversibly snuffed when he became trapped while pouring gasoline inside the house.

Impressed by these and other hare-brained notions gone awry, I spoke to "Darwin" about the forces at work behind such actions.

Is there such a thing as a stupidity gene?

A stupidity gene! Well, if there were a stupidity gene, I think it would have to be pretty much eradicated by now ... unless it keeps springing up with random mutations.

Why would that be?

Well, if there were a stupidity gene, the unfortunate owner of the gene would make fatally ignorant decisions more often than average. Therefore, the stupidity gene would be selected against so heavily that it couldn't linger in population for more than a few hundred generations ... unless there was a selective pressure that made it desirable in some circumstances.

Like?

Well, one of the positive side-effects of a stupidity gene might be that it would make someone take risks that an average person would not. Maybe that would lead to some new discovery, like cheese. Maybe it was the stupidity gene that made someone eat sour milk. But it led to a whole new food product.

I was thinking about that. A lot of these stories seem to involve some pretty innovative thinking.

Oh yeah! Right. If there are multiple stupidity genes, then having one or two might make someone creative, while having a dozen would make her a dangerous idiot.

For example, the fisherman who electrocuted himself ...

Yeah. He had a great idea! [This 1999 Darwin Award runner-up connected cables to the main power supply of his house, dropped the other end in the river, waited for a batch of electrocuted fish to float to the surface, and then waded into the water to retrieve his catch.]

So what's the difference between the kind of risk-taking that leads to great innovation, and the kind that leads to a humiliating demise?

The difference seems to be the decoupling of a new idea from an examination of the risks involved. If the risk-taker neglects to consider the deadly consequences, then only luck can save him from an embarrassing outcome. For example, Benjamin Franklin experimented with lightning using a key tied to a kite. I think that story is apocryphal, but it would be a good example of luck saving an innovator from disaster.

Is there a neurological explanation for the phenomenon that allows us to do something really stupid at the exact same moment we're thinking, "This is really stupid?"

We can follow several lines of thought in parallel. Once a hypothetical "great idea" reaches a critical juncture and begins to trigger a physical response, a parallel cautious line of thought might not be able to interrupt that response before it translates into action. If you've ever done something stupid, and thought a split-second before tragedy befalls that it might not be such a clever plan, then you've experienced the effects of parallel mental processing. It's rare for someone to think, "I didn't even see the consequences coming."

Next page | Do not spray this oven-cleaner into your mouth ...