Kamikaze ballooning Brazilian soars to Darwin Award The voting has not yet closed, but kamikaze ballooning Brazilian priest Antonio de Carli looks a dead cert to secure the 2008 Darwin Awards crown for the most impressive contribution to improving the gene pool by removing himself from it. The Roman Catholic daredevil decided back in April it was a really bright idea to attempt …
"...as a Roman Catholic priest, he wasn't in the gene pool in the first place?"
Hmmm, athough you kinda have a point here, RC priest *are* part
of the genes pool. At least where I leave.
You just don't get any official certificate for their deeds in this department :-))
Anon, just to avoid being excommunicated, or so I believe.
I never liked these Darwin awards. I do think there is something basically wrong with taking the p after people get horrible injuries or even die. You wouldn't chortle merrily at a road accident would you even if it was provably down to someone's stupidity. Bah humbug and happy new year to all.
yeah, it's just you...
I wouldn't chortle if one person's stupidity killed someone else, of course, but killing the stupid person himself -- good for a belly laugh even. But it has to be a spectacular, premeditated, stupidity, not just carelessness, a fit of rage/emotion, absent-mindedness, bad luck or any other factor beyond the guy's control.
Hell yes, I laugh at a road accident, ESPECIALLY if it was provably down to someone's stupidity. You're joking, right?
I consider someone being stupid on the roads and getting their just desserts to be a very happy event, especially if it results in one less person to run over me. Stay off the cell phone, stop turning around to smack your snot monkeys, and PAY ATTENTION to where your 2-ton SUV is going!
Oh yeah, and to the guy on a Harley-Davidson that doesn't^Wdidn't believe in front brakes and skidded past me through that intersection... HA! That was hilarious!
Sorry. That was generally funny, but I have to vote for 'Clotheslines' as that genius removed himself about 5 miles from my house.
In response to Mr. Harrison, yes, sometimes you do have to get a laugh out of people who do away with themselves by an obviously retarded means. As a likely resident of California (or some place like it) I can understand his feelings even if I find them naive.
Finally, the Priest... Yes, he removed himself from the gene pool, and entered the pool of jeans. As is states in the holy tombs of South Park, he obviously wasn't allowed to have biological children of his own. Little boys and hands can't get pregnant.
1) How did four people in a row fail to notice that the phrase 'Roman Catholic' was not followed by the word 'priest'? Do 'priest' and 'daredevil' suddenly look exactly the same to every English speaker on the planet except me? I know it's Friday, but -- what, you can't even be bothered to waste your employer's time properly?
2) You'd think the guy would've brought some kind of propulsion device with him. Or, you know, made sure to launch from a place where the wind wasn't going to carry him out to sea. (Belgium? Luxembourg? Another of those useless little postage-stamp European principalities? They're all well inland, I believe.)
But, then, if he couldn't use the GPS unit he brought with him, I guess there's already sort of a pattern of bad judgement and insufficient foresight being established.
I think this one is a bit ify as a Darwin. From the account, it seems likely that he knew the risks, and ignored them for the sake of doing something he wanted to do. Now that's an entirely different beast from:
A: not comprehending the risks in the first place (as in checking fuel levels with the aid of a lighter)
or
B: thinking that it was possible to mitigate those risks in some idiotic fashion (as in wearing dish washing gloves while using your chainsaw-on-a-stick to cut through a high-powered electrical distribution line)
I have always been a bit amused by the whole chainsaw-on-a-stick concept, by the way. They really do look way more like futuristic polearms to be weilded by zombie hunters than anything suitable for use in the backyard.
Even though the person was a priest he still could have eventually have left the priesthood and spawned the possibility no mater how small still exists that's why he was eligible some priests do leave the church.
To everyone who says you should not laugh at people like this i ask why?
Why do these people automatically get the respect to not be laughed at?
You know respect has to be earned its not a right, and if these people due to there own stupidity cause hurt and grief to friends and family and trouble for the people around them when someone has to pay for there remains to be scraped off whatever they got themselves killed on I as why do they get the automatic respect to not be laughed at?
Baa whatever my respect for the entire human race is virtually non existent as long as there is "preventable" hunger and thrust in the world, wars because a few people in charge have got there panties in a twist, and general stupidity is the norm in society.
-Jason
how do ya think we get more of 'em??? yes they do marry....
- and for the pedantic, humorless people.... NO, it is not that easy to get a Darwin's award...
Its not as easy as stepping in the road without looking....
you have to be very organised, to do a complex task straight away with whatever is to hand, and forget one vital thing that a bit of common sense will provide..... like reading the manual, or thinking about safety....
Strangely enough, these people DO survive, 90% of the time!!! and go on to do even crazier things....
pedantic people will NEVER 'get it' because they have such boring, planned, adventureless lives....
@Harrison:
Darwin award is an educational award: Main point is to get people learn from the stupidity from the others and then the deaths are good examples of bad examples.
There's also a pretty strong opinion behind Dardin Awards: "Stupidity should be more painful".
When humans were mostly food for predators (in ancient times), any stupid was soon food. Unfortunately this is no longer true and stupid people also breed, continuing stupidity.
If you want to argue with the semantics of the DA then you should obviously think before you write, there is the possibility of the priest or even the 70yr old man reproducing and hence populating the gene pool with their respective offspring's.
A priest renouncing his faith and men having babies in their eighties is not unknown.
I think you'll find Belgium is a constitutional monarchy with a Northern coastline and that Luxembourg is a Grand Duchy, not a principality. In fact, the only tiny European principality I can think of is Monaco, which sits right on the Mediterranean Sea, but why let facts stand in the way of a xenophobic rant, eh?
Uh, that whole meme here is wrong. As someone stated earlier:
"As is states in the holy tombs of South Park, he obviously wasn't allowed to have biological children of his own. Little boys and hands can't get pregnant."
And then forgot that wanking and sodomy is also not allowed, yet is accepted as happening.
So who says the priest with the pork pipe in the dining room is not a possibility?
Either they lost control of the top of the tree, and it fell towards the house, which contradicts the story... Or the tree went sideways and only 1 guy went flying, which contradicts the story... Or there is a big hill, the tree then slid down or something, which isn't in the story......... or the physics don't seem workable. The only other thing I could think of is, maybe they were not pulling the tree "away" from the house, but parallel to it and it fell the opposite way despite thier efforts, which is not how it's described either.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
