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  • Published: 20 October 2010
  • ISBN: 9781742531663
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336
Categories:

Darwin Awards VI

Countdown to Extinction




The Darwin Awards honour those who help natural selection by taking a swan dive into the shallow end of the gene pool.

(The countdown has begun . . . )

What distinguishes humans from baser animals is our higher intelligence.  This is because most humans know to think twice before headbutting a coconut or biting down on a live wire.  Intelligent individuals generally know not to use a mattress pad as  a floatation device, or to kitesurf in a hurricane.  Darwin Award winners, however, lack this basic common sense.

Named for the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards honour those who help natural selection by taking a swan dive into the shallow end of the gene pool.  From attaching a five-horsepower engine to a barstool, to hammering a metal hook into an explosive device, to using a Taser to treat a snake bite, The Darwin Awards: Countdown to Extinction show that the countdown (to human extinction) is well underway – and we won't exit this mortal coil without one last laugh.

Illustrated and featuring all-new tales of the marvellously macabre, The Darwin Awards: Countdown to Extinction chronicles humans who step onto the lowest rung on the evolutionary ladder and prove that intelligence is not as common among humans as we'd like to think.

  • Published: 20 October 2010
  • ISBN: 9781742531663
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336
Categories:

About the author

Wendy Northcutt

Wendy studied molecular biology at Berkeley, worked in a neuroscience research laboratory at Stanford, and later joined a biotech start-up developing treatments for cancer and diabetes. She wrote the Darwin Awards while waiting for her dastardly genetic manipulations to yield results.

Eventually Wendy shrugged aside the labcoat in favour of an off-beat career. She now writes both code and prose for the Darwin Awards website. Much of her time is spent wishing she could catch up. In her free time, Wendy chases eclipses, dines, dances, and inhabits an increasingly eccentric wardrobe. Her interests include reading, cats, gardening, glass-blowing, natural dyework, fondling textiles, and observing human nature.

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