Warning: The Darwin Awards are not for the tenderhearted. The vastly popular Web site, now a book, recognizes individuals who ensure the long-term survival of our species by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion. Who wins a Darwin Award? Terrorists who set their bombs on daylight saving time and delivered them on standard time, blowing the Warning: The Darwin Awards are not for the tenderhearted. The vastly popular Web site, now a book, recognizes individuals who ensure the long-term survival of our species by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion. Who wins a Darwin Award? Terrorists who set their bombs on daylight saving time and delivered them on standard time, blowing themselves up. Folks who put garlands around a Bengal tigers neck. Guys in Cambodia who took turns stomping on a land mine theyd brought into a bar. The six Egyptians who drowned trying to rescue a chicken that fell into a well. (The chicken alone survived.) The Buenos Aires husband who threw his wife out an eighth-floor window during a spat, noticed shed gotten caught in power lines, and jumped after her, angrily trying to finish the job, or remorsefully hoping to rescue her. He went splat; she escaped unscathed. There are some urban legends, like the sergeant said to have attached a Jet-Assisted Take-Off unit to his Chevy and hit a cliff 125 feet up (not true, says author Wendy Northcutt), and all-too-true honorable mentions, like the man who put weather balloons on his lawn chair, soared to 16,000 feet, crashed into power lines, blacked out Long Beach, California, and told police, A man cant just sit around. My favorite winner: the man who was bitten nine times by the same king brown snake because he put it in a bag on his car seat and kept sticking his hand back into the bag. Why did he pick up the snake with his left hand? Because I was holding a beer in my right one. And where did this take place? In Darwin, Australia. If you think somebody up there doesnt have a wicked sense of humor, The Darwin Awards may change your mind. --Tim Appelo