OT Humour - Darwin Awards

(MartinM) said:

The Long awaited 2004 DARWIN AWARDS..............

Yes, these are all true. They are finally out again. It's an annual
honour given to the person who did the gene pool the biggest service by
killing themselves in the most extraordinarily stupid way.

How about having Darwin Awards for the person who contributes to the
gene pool in the most significant way, i.e. stupendously successful
people who manage to have lots of well adjusted children who
contribute to human endeavour in the most positive way? After all,
that's a bigger bonus to society than all the attendant costs of
losing people to pointless accidents.

A

Ambrose Nankivell said:

How about having Darwin Awards for the person who contributes to the
gene pool in the most significant way, i.e. stupendously successful
people who manage to have lots of well adjusted children who
contribute to human endeavour in the most positive way? After all,
that's a bigger bonus to society than all the attendant costs of
losing people to pointless accidents.

Yeah, and people would prefer to read about that...

--
Mark.

Mark Tranchant said:

Ambrose Nankivell said:

How about having Darwin Awards for the person who contributes to the
gene pool in the most significant way, i.e. stupendously successful
people who manage to have lots of well adjusted children who
contribute to human endeavour in the most positive way? After all,
that's a bigger bonus to society than all the attendant costs of
losing people to pointless accidents.

Yeah, and people would prefer to read about that...

Of course not. But the vicious smugness of the current Darwin Awards
really annoys me.

A

MartinM popped their head over the parapet saw what was going on and
said

Quoted message said:

The Long awaited 2004 DARWIN AWARDS..............

Yes, these are all true> AND THE WINNER IS....

1. Based on a bet by the other members of his threesome, Everitt
Sanchez tried to wash his own "balls" in a ball-washer at the local
golf course. Proving once again that beer and testosterone are a bad
mix,

<snip word for word tale of woe>

Probably not true.

http://www.snopes.com/humor/follies/ballwash.htm

--
yours S
addy not usable (not that you would try it)
Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione

Quoted message said:

Probably not true.

http://www.snopes.com/humor/follies/ballwash.htm

While we're at it I read the lighter one several years ago, possibly in the
Fortean Times Strange Deaths column, so I doubt that's true either. I
always wondered who it was in the building that saw him get the lighter out
of his pocket.

In article <[email hidden]>,

(MartinM) said:

6. A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply,
because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with
milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited
into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire
burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.

OK, so public safety requires that we ensure petrol costs at least as
much as booze. Mr Brown, are you listening?

--
Nick Kew

In message <[email hidden]>, Mark
Thompson <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Probably not true.

While we're at it I read the lighter one several years ago, possibly in the
Fortean Times Strange Deaths column, so I doubt that's true either. I
always wondered who it was in the building that saw him get the lighter out
of his pocket.

Explosions can have odd damage patterns.

During the First World War, in a munitions factory at Limehouse in East
London [1] a foreman saw a workman using a cold chisel to scrape spilt
nitroglycerine off the concrete floor. This was so dangerous that the
shocked foreman sacked the worker on the spot.
The worker reacted by throwing the chisel into the pool of
nitroglycerine, causing an explosion that was still London folklore in
the 1980s. The witness who watched this was standing in the doorway of
the shed; he was blown an impressive distance by the blast but escaped
serious injury.
My grandmother heard and felt the explosion from the City, and she said
it seemed much nearer than it was.

Also Google for details of the Soham explosion (more munitions, this
time in a burning train in WW2) where a witness survived.

[1] Limehouse still looked blast-flattened when I last saw it.

--
Sue ];(🙂

[email hidden] (Nick Kew) wrote in message news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>,

(MartinM) said:

6. A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply,
because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with
milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited
into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire
burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.

OK, so public safety requires that we ensure petrol costs at least as
much as booze. Mr Brown, are you listening?

Would that put off Mr Withnail?

Upon the miasma of midnight, a darkling spirit identified as Sue
<[email hidden]> breathed:

Quoted message said:

In message <[email hidden]>, Mark
Thompson <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Probably not true.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

While we're at it I read the lighter one several years ago, possibly in the
Fortean Times Strange Deaths column, so I doubt that's true either. I
always wondered who it was in the building that saw him get the lighter out
of his pocket.

Quoted message said:

Explosions can have odd damage patterns.

<snip>

Indeed. IIRC when a petrol tanker exploded on (I think) a coast road in
the Algarve, right beside a holiday park, in one case a large motor
caravan and all its occupants were reduced to ash yet a caged bird which
had been next to the caravan escaped unscathed.

--
- Pyromancer.
- http://www.inkubus-sukkubus.co.uk <-- Pagan Gothic Rock!
- http://www.littlematchgirl.co.uk <-- Electronic Metal!
- http://www.revival.stormshadow.com <-- The Gothic Revival.

Mark Thompson said:

Quoted message said:

Probably not true.

http://www.snopes.com/humor/follies/ballwash.htm

Quoted message said:

While we're at it I read the lighter one several years ago, possibly in the
Fortean Times Strange Deaths column, so I doubt that's true either. I
always wondered who it was in the building that saw him get the lighter out
of his pocket.

About 20 years ago there was a huge explosion in a small shopping
centre in Glasgow, which destroyed a number of shops, and made the
overpass under which the shops had been constructed too unsafe for
traffic. There had earlier been complaints to the gas board about a
smell of gas in the locality. A shopkeeper remembered lending a candle
stump to a workman whom another wtiness was able to identify as one
of the investigating team from the gas board, and a third witness
remembered seeing them going down a manhole.

It's actually a very common kind of accident.
--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

In message <[email hidden]>, MartinM
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] (Nick Kew) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>,

(MartinM) said:

6. A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply,
because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with
milk. Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited
into the fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire
burned his house down, killing both him and his sister.

OK, so public safety requires that we ensure petrol costs at least as
much as booze. Mr Brown, are you listening?

Would that put off Mr Withnail?

I read recently that discoveries of new oilfields have now completely
ceased, they've all been found. And that since the oil companies know
this, they'll husband their resources while the price goes up, rather
than increase production to match demand from an ever-thirstier world
economy.

Anyone care to guess when petrol gets to cost more than whisky?

--
Sue ]8(🙂

Quoted message said:

I read recently that discoveries of new oilfields have now completely
ceased, they've all been found. And that since the oil companies know
this, they'll husband their resources while the price goes up, rather
than increase production to match demand from an ever-thirstier world
economy.

Fortunately that's complete bollocks. Where'd you read it?

Mark Thompson said:

> I read recently that discoveries of new oilfields have now completely

Quoted message said:

ceased, they've all been found. And that since the oil companies know
this, they'll husband their resources while the price goes up, rather
than increase production to match demand from an ever-thirstier world
economy.

Fortunately that's complete bollocks. Where'd you read it?

Maybe it is, but type in "Peak Oil" into a search engine & witness what crops up onto your screen.

In message <[email hidden]>, cfsmtb
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

Maybe it is, but type in "Peak Oil" into a search engine & witness what
crops up onto your screen.

I don't see why that would be the End of Suburbia, couldn't the
suburbanites just get bicycles?

Oh no - I've drifted an OT thread on-topic! I'll get me bike...

--
Sue ];(🙂

On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 23:26:56 +0100, Sue <[email hidden]> wrote
(more or less):
....

Quoted message said:

I read recently that discoveries of new oilfields have now completely
ceased, they've all been found.

They're still finding them. But the typical big find of today tends
to be about 1/3 to 1/4 the size of the big finds of decades back.

Quoted message said:

And that since the oil companies know
this, they'll husband their resources while the price goes up, rather
than increase production to match demand from an ever-thirstier world
economy.

The world economy is getting thirstier, but there's almost no spare
production capacity in the world. Saudi Arabia has the only
significant production capacity that's not in operation. (equivalent
to about 3% or global capacity). The USA is leaning on them to get it
into operation to lower current prices.

Quoted message said:

Anyone care to guess when petrol gets to cost more than whisky?

Most of the cost of whisky is tax...

--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk) http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk

Quoted message said:

The world economy is getting thirstier, but there's almost no spare
production capacity in the world. Saudi Arabia has the only
significant production capacity that's not in operation. (equivalent
to about 3% or global capacity). The USA is leaning on them to get it
into operation to lower current prices.

I'd hazard a guess that this low level is mostly due to spare capacity
being expensive to maintain and rather pointless from the point of view of
the people that pay for it (oil companies).

This is pure uninformed speculation, but I assume the only reasons for
Saudi Arabia having signficant spare capacity is to be able to threaten its
use against countries that would otherwise stick two fingers up at the OPEC
cartel, to help keep oil prices stable, and to keep the Americans
interested in a nice, secure and benevolent kind of way. This (and the
ludicrous amount of oil they've got) makes it feasible for Saudi to have
this huge level of spare capacity.

But as I say, I don't really know much about this topic so the above is
possibly all nonsense. Maybe if we crossposted to the motoring lot we'd
get a more informed answer :-)

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden] says...

Quoted message said:

Of course not. But the vicious smugness of the current Darwin Awards
really annoys me.

I can see your point, but I'm definately a fan. I think that mankind as
a species opted-out of natural selection some time ago, so it's always
good to see individuals who are determined to redress the balance.

Jon

In message <[email hidden]>, Mark
Thompson <[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

But as I say, I don't really know much about this topic so the above is
possibly all nonsense. Maybe if we crossposted to the motoring lot we'd
get a more informed answer :-)

You probably know more than you think. Oil forms when ancient swamps
get buried deep enough but not too deep, and accumulates only if the
first part happens under a suitable geological lid that'll keep it from
surfacing (it floats on water).
Only a limited number of places have ancient swamps with convenient
domes or faults over them, and it's certain that most have already been
found.

Three-fifths of the world is deep ocean crust, which can't form oil that
we know of.
Most of the rest has no suitable sediments - for instance, it's been
conclusively proved that there can't be oil under Basingstoke.

It's not hard to identify possible oil-trapping formations if you can
get access to the area, but the smaller they are the more detailed your
mapping has to be. So the big ones get found first. Then, you drill
into them and find a lovely dome formation with nothing underneath
that's ever been swampy, or with cracks in that've let all the oil out.
Even oilfields in places like Chechnya (a persistent trouble spot) and
the Arctic (well inhospitable climatically) are already being exploited.

It won't last forever, the question is when and how fast the supply will
dry up.
--
Sue ];(🙂

On 26 Jul 2004 09:13:26 GMT, Mark Thompson
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

The world economy is getting thirstier, but there's almost no spare
production capacity in the world. Saudi Arabia has the only
significant production capacity that's not in operation. (equivalent
to about 3% or global capacity). The USA is leaning on them to get it
into operation to lower current prices.

I'd hazard a guess that this low level is mostly due to spare capacity
being expensive to maintain and rather pointless from the point of view of
the people that pay for it (oil companies).

This is pure uninformed speculation, but I assume the only reasons for
Saudi Arabia having signficant spare capacity is to be able to threaten its
use against countries that would otherwise stick two fingers up at the OPEC
cartel, to help keep oil prices stable, and to keep the Americans
interested in a nice, secure and benevolent kind of way. This (and the
ludicrous amount of oil they've got) makes it feasible for Saudi to have
this huge level of spare capacity.

That and the fact that Saudi Arabia's production capacity is 100%
government-owned, so policy and commerce remain tightly coupled in a
way that is different to say, the USA - where it can be argued that
government is 80% owned by the production capacity :-)

Quoted message said:

But as I say, I don't really know much about this topic so the above is
possibly all nonsense. Maybe if we crossposted to the motoring lot we'd
get a more informed answer :-)

--
Cheers,
Euan
Gawnsoft: http://www.gawnsoft.co.sr
Symbian/Epoc wiki: http://html.dnsalias.net:1122
Smalltalk links (harvested from comp.lang.smalltalk) http://html.dnsalias.net/gawnsoft/smalltalk