Y'all know who started the "Darwin Awards" right?

[redqueen]

Just makin' sure.

[MyUncle]

1. Ummm, Darwin?

[miss_kitty]

2. that was my guess n/t

[redqueen]

3. BWAHAHAHAHA

seriously?

[Lavender Brown]

4. No... who was it

Seriously :shrug:

[MyUncle]

6. Serious answer - no.

But now I would like to know - I'll go see if it is on Snopes.com. You've got me curious to waste more time.

[blackcat77]

5. The books are authored by Wendy Northcutt

I don't know if she's the one who started it though.

[TheDebbieDee]

7. It was named "Darwin" to recognize those indivduals.................

who accidentally kill themselves doing something so stupid that it is considered beneficial to the rest of us, cause hopefully, they died before they could pass their genes along to other humans through procreation.

Darwin's "Survival of the Fittest" theory in action.

[LibLabUK]

9. Well..

you don't actually have to die to recieve an award, merely remove yourself from the gene pool, so sterilisation (in some way that some people woudl find amusing) counts too.

It's schadenfreude, and it's not a particularly nice trait imho.

[redqueen]

8. Bah

I can't remember or find the nut's name now. Some rightwinger. The lady that started the site ripped it off, IIRC.

Anyway... just wanted to stress that it was a RIGHTWINGER who first thought it would be funny to mock the dead.

[Kid_A]

10. Does that mean we're not supposed to laugh at it anymore?

Just because a RIGHTWINGER creates something doesn't mean it's not something worth checking out.

[redqueen]

11. Oh no I didn't say that

Just helping to keep things in their proper perspective is all.

:hi:

[Pithlet]

12. Oops

never mind. I was mistaken.

[VOX]

13. Only God can make a Darwin Award!

Just kidding. :)

[JDPriestly]

14. I don't know who started it,

but -- dead or alive -- I think Bush deserves one for not guarding the hundreds of tons of high power explosives in Iraq.

[CanuckAmok]

16. No, God gave Darwin the freedom to think for himself.

That's why God created Darwin.

or something.

[patcox2]

15. We should also cheer when the physically weak die?

Right? When the weak and frail die because they are susceptible to disease, when little weak old ladies are murdered by physcially strong men, this is a good thing because its natural selection, improving the gene pool?

Intelligence is not necessarily a darwinian virtue. Its not strongly selected for, evidence is that the intelligent reproduce at a slower rate and thus the gene pool as a whole is getting stupider. Sexual selection certainly doesn't favor it, the chicks will take a brad pitt over some nerdy pointdexter every time. (and those who congratulate themselves because their love is based on intelligence or sense of humor, don't pat yourself on the back too much, you are in the minority, and Darwinian selection doesn't favor elites, it favors the masses; he who dies with the most offspring wins, Einstein gets beat out by morons daily).

Morally, is it okay for the phsyically strong to overpower the weak and take their stuff and enslave them?

Is it morally right for the more intelligent to use their superior intellect to get the best of dumb people in business and take their money or get them to endenture themselves with impossible credit? Whats the difference?

Its a genetic crapshoot whether you are born smart or stupid, tall or short, ugly or pretty, weak or strong. Why this hubris over intelligence, this assumption that intelligence equates to a moral positive, where clearly beauty and strength do not, such that we should laugh at the deaths of the weak or the ugly.