Darwin Awards 2010

A non-technical blog this month, dear reader, forced upon me because of a misleading blog I read today. Imagine that! What is the Internet coming too when you can't trust a blog?

Anyway, I Googled for the "Darwin Awards 2010" and stumbled on a blog that claimed to announce the Darwin Awards results for 2010. While some of the alleged awards were amusing - I particularly liked the guy who tried to siphon off diesel from a camper van but mistakenly put the hose into the sceptic tank - they were clearly not true Darwin Awards.  I need scarcely remind you dear reader that the Darwin Awards "commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it". In short, they are only ever awarded posthumously for unparalleled stupidity. 

The real Darwin Awards web site can be found at this location so please don't confuse it with imitations.

For reasons of good taste, I won't reproduce the winning entry here.  However I do recount this runner up which unfortunately has not been confirmed as true.

In the late fall and early winter months, snow-covered mountains become infested with hunters. One ambitious pair climbed high up a mountain in search of their quarry. The trail crossed a small glacier that had crusted over. The lead hunter had to stomp a foot-hold in the snow, one step at a time, in order to cross the glacier.

Somewhere near the middle of the glacier, his next stomp hit not snow but a rock. The lead hunter lost his footing and fell. Down the crusty glacier he zipped, off the edge and out of sight.

Unable to help, his companion watched him slide away. After a while, he shouted out, "Are you OK?"

"Yes!" came the answer.

Reasoning that it was a quick way off the glacier, the second hunter plopped down and accelerated down the ice, following his friend. There, just over the edge of the glacier, was his friend...holding onto the top of a tree that barely protruded from the snow.

There were no other treetops nearby, nothing to grab, nothing but a hundred-foot drop onto the rocks below. As the second hunter shot past the first, he uttered his final epitaph: a single word, which we may not utter lest our mothers soap our mouths.