Charles Darwin was right
Natural selection: the process whereby organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. The theory of its action was first fully expounded by Charles Darwin and is now believed to be the main process that brings about evolution.
OK, so Charles Darwin figured species that were well-adapted to their environment would tend to have a better chance to survive and have offspring and species that adapted poorly to their environment would tend to die out and not have offspring and that’s part of how species evolve.
Makes sense.
Right now our environment is saturated with the coronavirus, so if Chuck was right the people who adapt well – wear masks, observe social distancing and get vaccinated – will have a better chance of surviving than the people who don’t.
As the cartoon points out, getting some people out of the shallow end might improve the quality of our gene pool.
Unfortunately, a lot of the lamebrains who ignore those safety precautions are getting people who follow those safety precautions sick, but that’s a different cartoon which I’ve already drawn and will probably draw again.
Anyway…
Drawing this cartoon made me think of the Darwin Awards and if you don’t know what those are, here’s the explanation from their website:
The Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it in a spectacular manner!
This morning I went to their website, so I could give some examples of the kind of stuff they honor and you gotta stand back and admire the Olympic-Gold-Medal quality of the stupidity on display.
For instance:
A guy tried to climb Mt. Fuji in street clothes and without proper climbing equipment and decided to livestream his climb, so he didn’t want to turn back and disappoint his viewers because when the going gets tough, the stupid keep going. He started to slip and apparently holding on to his phone was way more important than arresting his fall, so he fell and died.
Two guys in Texas tried to jump their Chevy Cruze over an open drawbridge, didn’t make it, fell into the water and drowned. If it were me, I would have suggested a car with more than four cylinders and 153 horses, but nobody asked.
A guy set up a booby trap, managed to trigger it and shoot himself.
A guy tried to take a selfie with a bear. The bear did not appreciate the opportunity.
A guy stuffed a handgun down the front of his pants like they do in the movies and wound up shooting himself in the dick. Turns out you don’t actually have to die to get a Darwin Award as long as what you did made sure you couldn’t have kids, so this guy qualified.
A guy found a python on the side of the road and tried to take it home by motorcycle. Didn’t make it because he crashed while being strangled.
A guy fell into a giant sinkhole after attempting a hand stand on the guard rail and apparently, he wasn’t the only guy dumb enough to try this stunt.
A guy did a handstand on the railing of a boat during a Booze Cruise in Boston Harbor, was told to knock it off, didn’t, tried another hand stand, fell into the water and drowned.
I can’t help but notice that most of these incidents of stupidity start with “a guy” which might make you think women are smarter and don’t do stupid stuff unless you count having a relationship with “a guy” who does.
Food for thought.
A story I’d kinda forgotten
That last story about the Booze Cruise and failed handstand reminded me of going on Halloween Booze Cruise on San Diego Bay, being on the top deck of a riverboat and seeing some guy climb over the railing and hang over the paddle wheel while holding on to the flag pole at the back end of the boat.
I turned away for a second and when I looked back what I saw was a bent flag pole and no guy.
I walked back and looked over the railing to see if the guy had been sliced and diced by the paddle wheel and somehow he missed it, but was drunk, treading water in the middle of San Diego Bay in the dark and if you’ve even been in the Pacific Ocean you know all the commercials are bullshit because the water is ice cold.
There’s a reason California surfers wear wetsuits.
So I told the friend I was with to go tell the captain someone fell off the boat and was directly behind us, while I decided whether I needed to jump in the water and help, which would have been stupid because then there would be two drunk guys in the middle of San Diego Bay working on drowning.
Fortunately, I decided to stay on board, the boat turned around and fished the guy out of the water, but if I hadn’t noticed that bent flagpole, I’m pretty sure that drunk guy would have become a Darwin Award candidate and as the cartoon points out, we have enough of those already.