Anyone chiming in about the recent news of kids who (mistakenly?) tried imitating the SADDAM HANGING and killed themselves.

One family is blaming TV for showing it...uh, we can't monitor kids all the time but WE CAN TEACH them what the news was about...STOP BLAMING THE TV!

Others did not know the severity of Saddams act and may have made that fatal mistake ....

just posting this for comments....

^ provided this is true...

When you get a number as high as 50 million "kids," you'll always have a few dumb enough to do the dumbest thing possible.  50 million (my guestimation) is an awfully big number, so statistically speaking...

Not to be too cynical, but if you try to duplicate an event that killed a man, the end result might, oh, be death!

If these were suicides, I feel sorry that these kids were so troubled to have to resort to that.

If these were out of curiosity, then they are bound to wind up here.

Addendum: This is one story:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2770465

The kid was 10. Such a shame.

The earliest memory of media-inspired mass stupidity of this sort was the fad of Russian roulette inspired by "The Deer Hunter."
Two differences, that was a movie.  Not real.  And...many of the victims of accidental death via Russian roulette were grown men who ought to know better.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/12/grommit.gif

Ever seen the commercial with the guy climbing a skyscraper?  The small print reads "Do not attempt."
The problem is, anybody dumb enough to climb a skyscraper is not smart enough to "read the fine print."
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/11/BangHead.gif

^ provided this is true...

When you get a number as high as 50 million "kids," you'll always have a few dumb enough to do the dumbest thing possible.  50 million (my guestimation) is an awfully big number, so statistically speaking...


  It's true...

  Child is present at TV news reports of Saddam's execution with those brief clips of the noose being placed around his neck.  Family retires to kitchen to prepare for dinner.  Parent notices child late for dinner.  Parent looks for child.  Parent enters child's bedroom and finds child hanging from top bunk bed, a makeshift noose around his neck...

  That's a rough outline of a story I'd read, online, in the days following Saddam's execution...

If these were out of curiosity, then they are bound to wind up here.

((*snip*))

The kid was 10. Such a shame.


So close, and yet so far. You reference Father Darwin, yet you claim a few sentences later that His cleansing of the gene pool is "such a shame".

I see no shame here, except in that the kid oughta be ashamed of himself for being so stupid.  But the punishment for stupidity is not shame.  Merely laughter.  Father Darwin is merciful.

Stupidity is the only capital crime, and there is no appeal.  Father Darwin may be merciful, but He is also just.

So close, and yet so far. You reference Father Darwin, yet you claim a few sentences later that His cleansing of the gene pool is "such a shame".

I see no shame here, except in that the kid oughta be ashamed of himself for being so stupid.  But the punishment for stupidity is not shame.  Merely laughter.  Father Darwin is merciful.

Stupidity is the only capital crime, and there is no appeal.  Father Darwin may be merciful, but He is also just.


Well, I was hoping the deceased was more like 16 (and therefore actually eligible for a DA) and pulling a Jackass-type stunt than a 10 year old who probably still believes in video-game style deaths: i.e., you get three lives, or can hit the "reset" button to save your ass. Needless to say, he found out the hard way that "insert more coins to continue" is n/a to people.

While I usually LMAO at the Darwin Awards site, I can't really see a lot of humor in ignorance causing a death, especially of a 10 year old. Now, blatant stupidity is always ripe for satire, ridicule and uproarious laughter.

   It's true...

   Child is present at TV news reports of Saddam's execution with those brief clips of the noose being placed around his neck.  Family retires to kitchen to prepare for dinner.  Parent notices child late for dinner.  Parent looks for child.  Parent enters child's bedroom and finds child hanging from top bunk bed, a makeshift noose around his neck...

   That's a rough outline of a story I'd read, online, in the days following Saddam's execution...

So you think your kid is safe just hanging around in his room?  Think again!

That reminds me of a scene from the movie "Heathers," only the girl faked it to get attention!

The earliest memory of media-inspired mass stupidity of this sort was the fad of Russian roulette inspired by "The Deer Hunter."
Two differences, that was a movie.  Not real.  And...many of the victims of accidental death via Russian roulette were grown men who ought to know better.
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/12/grommit.gif

Ever seen the commercial with the guy climbing a skyscraper?  The small print reads "Do not attempt."
The problem is, anybody dumb enough to climb a skyscraper is not smart enough to "read the fine print."
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/11/BangHead.gif



Then again how many people copied JACKASS THE MOVIE- stunts?

Then again how many people copied JACKASS THE MOVIE- stunts?


We also have the kid a few years ago who killed his cousin by body-slamming her.

So close, and yet so far. You reference Father Darwin, yet you claim a few sentences later that His cleansing of the gene pool is "such a shame".

I see no shame here, except in that the kid oughta be ashamed of himself for being so stupid.  But the punishment for stupidity is not shame.  Merely laughter.  Father Darwin is merciful.

Stupidity is the only capital crime, and there is no appeal.  Father Darwin may be merciful, but He is also just.

I wish folks would not misuse Darwin's name as such.  It misleads people regarding Charles Darwin's theories.
For one thing, "social Darwinism" is a misnomer, and Charles Darwin never said "Survival of the fittest."  That was Herbert Spencer.  Biological evolution is not a conscious process.  People do stupid crap, it has nothing to do with Darwin.


We also have the kid a few years ago who killed his cousin by body-slamming her.

People doing stupid crap is nothing new and goes on with or without TV.  There was that trend some years back of kids on the dare lying in the middle of the highway at night.  Some of them got run over and died.  Surprise, surprise!
::)

Biological evolution is not a conscious process.  People do stupid crap, it has nothing to do with Darwin.


For around 3,000,000,000 years, the dominant lifeforms on this planet were microorganisms.  In second place for the past 600,000,000 years have been bugs. 

The protochimp who opened a coconut by smashing it against a rock got to pass on his genes. The protochimp who opened a coconut by smashing it against his own skull, not so much.

Lather, rinse, repeat, billions of times, across trillions of individuals over millions of years. We hairless apes are the new kids on the block, barely 2 million years old (and less than 100,000 years old in our current form), and the only thing we have to differentiate ourselves from tiger chow is our brains.  Our teeth are inefficient, we have no claws, our muscles are pathetically weak, and we burn a third of our calories to maintain hunks of grey matter in skulls that are so inefficiently big that our mothers still die while spawning us. Intelligence is about the only thing we've got going for us.

Our survival, despite our numerous disadvantages, is a strong hint that intelligence is selected for as a survival trait.

But the experiment is ongoing.  Maybe on most planets on which sophisticated multicellular organisms arise, intelligence tops out at (or shortly after surpassing it, reverts to) the point where the chimps and dolphins got stuck:  smart enough to keep the benefits of cooperation, too dumb (or on a planet on which metallic resources are distributed too sparsely, or lacking opposable thumbs, or living in an environment where there's no fire) to get on the track to inventing the internal combustion engine and nuclear weapons.

Chuck's just playing dice along with the rest of the universe, wondering if anyone gets to the "building spaceships or self-replicating robots and spending the next billion years migrating across the galaxy" stage of the game.

For around 3,000,000,000 years, the dominant lifeforms on this planet were microorganisms.  In second place for the past 600,000,000 years have been bugs. 

The protochimp who opened a coconut by smashing it against a rock got to pass on his genes. The protochimp who opened a coconut by smashing it against his own skull, not so much.

Lather, rinse, repeat, billions of times, across trillions of individuals over millions of years. We hairless apes are the new kids on the block, barely 2 million years old (and less than 100,000 years old in our current form), and the only thing we have to differentiate ourselves from tiger chow is our brains.  Our teeth are inefficient, we have no claws, our muscles are pathetically weak, and we burn a third of our calories to maintain hunks of grey matter in skulls that are so inefficiently big that our mothers still die while spawning us. Intelligence is about the only thing we've got going for us.

Our survival, despite our numerous disadvantages, is a strong hint that intelligence is selected for as a survival trait.

But the experiment is ongoing.  Maybe on most planets on which sophisticated multicellular organisms arise, intelligence tops out at (or shortly after surpassing it, reverts to) the point where the chimps and dolphins got stuck:  smart enough to keep the benefits of cooperation, too dumb (or on a planet on which metallic resources are distributed too sparsely, or lacking opposable thumbs, or living in an environment where there's no fire) to get on the track to inventing the internal combustion engine and nuclear weapons.

Chuck's just playing dice along with the rest of the universe, wondering if anyone gets to the "building spaceships or self-replicating robots and spending the next billion years migrating across the galaxy" stage of the game.

http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/14/sign10.gif
Good points all around.

I was referring to the sole consciousness of an individual specimen.  There may be a "trans-consciousness" or a "meta-consciousness" at work turning the wheels of evolution.

There may be a "trans-consciousness" or a "meta-consciousness" at work turning the wheels of evolution.


There may be, and there may not be.

The "experiment" to which I referred was intended as a metaphor, as was my anthropomorphization of the process of natural selection by referring to it as the figurative Father Darwin. 

The science (being about how, and not why) works fine with either assumption.

Arguably since the development of language, and definitely since the development of domesticated food and animal crops, there has been a hand at the wheel.  It's ours.  Here's what you do to make the crops grow: eat the little bitty ears of corn, but save the the big ears of corn for planting.  If you mate the big cow with the big bull, you'll get more meat, more milk, and be able to plow more land next year.  Here's what animals and plants to eat.  Here's what you do with the rotten fruit when you want something that'll make you feel good, especially when the water's not fit to drink.  Here's the plants that'll really mess you up, and that you should only take when the Shaman says it's OK to eat them.  Here's the plants that you Just. Don't. Eat. At. All.  Which brings us full circle to the kid, Saddam, and the noose.  One of the tips my tribal elders had taught me, even by age 10, was that in life, you don't get to reload from a save point.  How they figured that out, I don't know, because when I was 10, my parents had never even played video games. But somehow they knew.

Like the turtle, we make progress only when we stick our necks out.  They laughed at Og the Caveman when he ate the rotten barley malt mash (and Og, having just discovered beer, laughed back!)  They laughed at Einstein.  But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

They laughed at Og the Caveman when he ate the rotten barley malt mash (and Og, having just discovered beer, laughed back!)  They laughed at Einstein.  But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.


I laugh at Stephen Hawking every time I hear him talk.  But that is simply because for a Cambridge professor, he sounds amazingly like "Der Sweedish Chef" whenever he talks.  :D

I laugh at Stephen Hawking every time I hear him talk.  But that is simply because for a Cambridge professor, he sounds amazingly like "Der Sweedish Chef" whenever he talks.   :D

Hawking is a prime example of the value of man's evolved brain.  We have come so far with technology, you don't even need a body that functions.  If you can still stoke up the brain, you can be a valuable asset to civilization!  In the old days, Hawking would have died years ago.  Technology has not come far enough to restore his body, but look at the wonders his mind has brought us since technology has been able to keep him alive and thnking. 

Not to be too cynical, but if you try to duplicate an event that killed a man, the end result might, oh, be death!

If these were suicides, I feel sorry that these kids were so troubled to have to resort to that.

If these were out of curiosity, then they are bound to wind up here.

Addendum: This is one story:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2770465

The kid was 10. Such a shame.
Natural selection at work,unfortunately.