And the winner loser is!

[953 nut 57,036]

 

 

Whether you’re a seasoned scientist who doesn’t mind getting your hands dirty or the thought of math and dissection makes you blanch, on Darwin Day on February 12 we celebrate Charles Darwin’s work and science in general. Take the extra time to learn about his experiments, findings, and accomplishments, and reflect on how they still affect us today. The discovery of evolutionary creation has led scientists across multiple fields to make life-altering and life-saving discoveries about our species and how we originated. There’s a lot to be grateful about for Darwin and his research!

On what would later become Darwin Day, future naturalist Charles Darwin is born to a wealthy family of high society doctors, February 12, 1809.

After serving as an apprentice doctor with his father, young Charles Darwin heads off to Edinburgh Medical School.

When medical school doesn’t work out, Darwin is sent to Christ’s College, Cambridge, to become an Anglican parson in 1828. Theology was also unin

On December 27, 1831 Darwin, aboard the HMS Beagle as a naturalist, traveled with the crew for five years, constantly documenting natural life and zoology throughout.

Published in 1859 was Darwin’s groundbreaking 500+ page book, “On the Origin of Species,” which lays his theory of human evolution, was released and gained unexpected clamor and popularity.

The Darwin Awards originated in 1985 as posts on Usenet group discussions. One early post described the rhetorical tongue-in-cheek honor awards as being given to people who "made the supreme sacrifice to keep their genes out of our pool ensuring the survival of the species."

 

[SylvanLakeWH 26,825]

AKA " @Pullstart Day" in Michigan and certain parts of Wisconsin... 

 

 

 

 

[ri702bill 8,822]

25 minutes ago, SylvanLakeWH said:

AKA " @Pullstart Day" in Michigan and certain parts of Wisconsin...

Most likely a shortage of Band-Aids there today......

[953 nut 57,036]

You'll have to cut @Pullstart a little slack, I watched a 45 minute video of Kevin and his daughter working on her SUV and there wasn't a drop of blood shed.   

[adsm08 2,469]

25 minutes ago, 953 nut said:

You'll have to cut @Pullstart a little slack, I watched a 45 minute video of Kevin and his daughter working on her SUV and there wasn't a drop of blood shed.   

 

I've been a professional mechanic for 19 years. I didn't know it was possible to work on a car for 45 minutes and not bleed.

[Mickwhitt 4,907]

In my previous role as a cop I saw plenty of examples of the Darwin awards nominees. 

 

A guy stealing copper cable to sell as scrap chose an 11Kv feed into a steel mill. Unfortunately it wasn't a closed down steel mill and the cable was live  which is exactly the opposite of the guy when his hacksaw cut through the armor sheathing. 

 

Another who built a home made machine to allow him to safely "hang" himself by the neck to increase his sexual enjoyment. It was designed to let go of the rope when he pressed a lever just as he passed out. He didn't factor in that this lever needed to be "deadman" style in operation,  and he died during its first test run.

 

And from an engineer point of view a guy was working at a scrap yard, cutting up machinery that operated large valves. These large cylinders contained two huge compression springs to provide assistance to the valve operation.  Held together by long threaded rods the springs were in a compressed state and there were warning tags on each to inform engineers not to disassemble the units without the proper equipment. 

Turns out the proper equipment did not comprise of an oxy acetylene torch which our hero selected as his weapon of choice. According witness evidence there's a loud bang followed by a boing noise as the springs made a bid for freedom. We only found one of the two, quite a way from the yard, the other is presumably on a roof or in the nearby canal. Wherever it went it impacted our hero and ended his life in spectacular fashion before vanishing. 

 

There are many more as you can imagine. But also many more who really should have been removed from the gene pool, given they were paddling about in the shallow end of it lol. 

[8ntruck 7,286]

A couple of candidates whose actions are said to have added devices and rules to our daily lives to make us safer:

 

The home owner that decided to use his rotary lawnmower to trim his hedge.  Lost several fingers as he reached under the deck of the running mower to pick it up for the hedge trim is said to have caused the requirement for the dead man controls we all know and love.

 

A person who was having difficulty getting the cap off of a new 2 liter bottle of pop.  They resorted to a big pair of Channelok pliers and turning the cap in the tightening direction, stripped the threads and nearly blinded themselves when the cap hit them in the eye as it explosively released.  Result, interrupted threads on plastic pop bottle.

 

The "legal" sections of instruction manuals describing the dire consequences of misusing a product - quite often this section is more detailed and longrt than the actual operating instructions.

 

Shouldn't really complain, though.  It is for the greater good.

[Mickwhitt 4,907]

Again when I was in the police, we had a health and safety inspection in our second floor office. 

 

The report highlighted several areas of concern for the Inspector; objects stored on top of lockers which could fall an injure someone, things stored under desks which could trip someone etc.

 

The Inspector gave us a week to address the issues before he reinspected the office. So being mature, intelligent police officers we decided to put up some warning signs to assist our colleagues in navigating our office safely.  I remember a few good ones, which resulted in us being put on the carpet for a good talking to.

 

"DO NOT EAT THE CUTLERY! "

"THIS WINDOW IS NOT AN EXIT!"

"CAUTION, FLOOR UNDERFOOT!"

"THIS WALL IS UNLIKELY TO MOVE!"

 

We thought it was funny, but our gaffers were a bit more serious about the whole thing lol. 

 

[adsm08 2,469]

5 hours ago, Mickwhitt said:

 

"DO NOT EAT THE CUTLERY! "

"THIS WINDOW IS NOT AN EXIT!"

"CAUTION, FLOOR UNDERFOOT!"

"THIS WALL IS UNLIKELY TO MOVE!"

 

We thought it was funny, but our gaffers were a bit more serious about the whole thing lol. 

 

 

I've always loved British humor.

[953 nut 57,036]

15 hours ago, Mickwhitt said:

The report highlighted several areas of concern for the Inspector; objects stored on top of lockers which could fall an injure someone, things stored under desks which could trip someone etc.

They probably wouldn't approve of this.

[Handy Don 13,144]

18 hours ago, Mickwhitt said:

We thought it was funny, but our gaffers were a bit more serious about the whole thing lol. 

“Corporate” humor is quite the slippery slope. 

Bureaucrats are, practically by definition, humorless and cannot take, or even appreciate, a good joke.

I would’ve risked arguing that being able to create humor about a situation demonstrates a keen awareness of said situation--and been chided for my efforts!

[SylvanLakeWH 26,825]

1 minute ago, Handy Don said:

“Corporate” humor is quite the slippery slope. 

Bureaucrats are, practically by definition, humorless and cannot take, or even appreciate, a good joke.

I would’ve risked arguing that being able to create humor about a situation demonstrates a keen awareness of said situation--and been chided for my efforts!

On the mark...

 

Best offices are the ones that can laugh at themselves... sadly fewer and far between... great humor is now demonized and penalized... 

[EB-80/8inPA 1,774]

Safety Third!  (H/T Mike Rowe)

2 hours ago, 953 nut said:

They probably wouldn't approve of this.

 

[Mickwhitt 4,907]

7 hours ago, Handy Don said:

Corporate” humor is quite the slippery slope. 

Bureaucrats are, practically by definition, humorless

Quite agree, that same office was full of degenerates like me who enjoyed a poke at the high ups in the rank structure and those attempting to climb the slippery pole.

One such department employed a consultancy firm to come up with a slogan- "Brevity and resonance equals clarity" Wha? Clarity, you wouldn't know clarity if it bit you.

So we came up with our own slogan, "Naivety and imprudence equals gullibility "  didn't go down too well on the PowerPoint of theirs we doctored.

 

In a similar vein the management moved us to a state of the art building, huge open plan office with each training department having its own set of desks with a corporate printed sign hanging over each space to say who worked there. That's was to stop our office team getting up to any more tricks.

Our department was called operational police training or OPT., which had been printed on our official overhead banner sign.

After identifying the exact type face and shade of blue of the sign I made a new version which I sneakily fixed over the original late at night. It simply said OPTICIANS.  It took two weeks before anyone noticed and raised a query about it. 

 

This led to a series of Colditz like goon baiting from our team, with ever more inventive ways of getting one over on the senior officers. 

 

The sign caper was repeated a few times, on office doors, gaffers name plates and the like. One memorable triumph was the ALERT STATUS signs posted on every landing to tell everyone the current threat level to the building. The levels went from LOW (no attack likely) through MODERATE, SUBSTANTIAL, SEVERE and CRITICAL (an attack is highly likely)

We replaced every sign on four floors, including the Major crime investigation team, with an identically printed plate saying MILDLY CONCERNED. That only took a few days to spot. 

Our favourite method of subterfuge was to ring through to reception with a message for someone to attend a given location or call an extension. The reception clerk (not an ex-cop or streetwise person) would use a building wide Tannoy system to put out the call. Rather like Bart Simpson we would get pages sent out for such folk as:-

DC 10, could DC 10 attend the conference room 

Could PC World please contact extension 4351 (PC World is a computer shop in the uk and extension 4351 was for our IT department) 

Detective Inspector Dration please call the bar, that's DI Dration to call the police bar.

DS Janus to contact the MIT unit, that's DS Hugh Janus to contact MIT

And my favourite,  

Could PC Kiddick call his wife as a matter of urgency,  that's PC Don Kiddick to  call home.

These calls were rapidly followed by muffled laughter from everywhere but the senior officers who tried unsuccessfully to locate the origins of each call and finally gave up, we got bored and the game lapsed. 

 

 

[adsm08 2,469]

Hey @Mickwhitt, how's the Conservative Party's homeless initiative coming along? Their self-imposed deadline is coming up this year.

 

Edited February 15 by adsm08

[Mickwhitt 4,907]

6 hours ago, adsm08 said:

, how's the Conservative Party's homeless initiative coming along?

Well it's a bit complicated, that plan was initially meant to indicate the intention to halve the number of homeless people in England by 2025. But it's since emerged that Boris Johnson (remember him?) Had come up with a headline grabbing Guinness world record attempt to saw in half as many homeless people as he could in 30 minutes using a Pen and Teller style circular saw. It wasn't common knowledge at the time but Johnson was an aspiring amateur magician, having mastered making expense claims disappear and tweaked escaping from handcuffs by simply avoiding being locked up in the first place.

Anyway it all came to nothing as we got a new prime minister who didn't want to be a magician but was on a training course to be a comedian, he tried so many ways to make us laugh! 

And now we have a new government altogether who have embraced the fly on the wall style entertainment rather than the music hall act of the conservatives. Think The Osbournes and you will see what I mean. ...

A dimly lit number ten Downing street, Enter Rachel Reeves in a dressing gown and fluffy slippers, off stage Keir Starmer shouts "Rachel, have you seen my effing Armani suit, the one that bloke bought for me? And I can't find any of those posh glasses." 

Rachel replies exasperated;  "Keir, I'm too bloody busy to look now, I've got my CV to alter, AGAIN, and these expense claims don't write themselves. You'll have to get Mandelson to look for them "

A distracted Keir wanders in wearing his red silk boxer shorts with a hammer and sickle motif looking agitated; "F@#£ me Rachel, Mandelson couldn't find his arse with both hands and a mirror, that's why we sent him to bloody America. Let them look after him for a bit, have you seen my bloody tie Rachel? The one with all the flags on it, you know all the countries we welcome asylum seekers from..." fade to black 

[adsm08 2,469]

10 hours ago, Mickwhitt said:

Well it's a bit complicated, that plan was initially meant to indicate the intention to halve the number of homeless people in England by 2025. But it's since emerged that Boris Johnson (remember him?) Had come up with a headline grabbing Guinness world record attempt to saw in half as many homeless people as he could in 30 minutes using a Pen and Teller style circular saw. It wasn't common knowledge at the time but Johnson was an aspiring amateur magician, having mastered making expense claims disappear and tweaked escaping from handcuffs by simply avoiding being locked up in the first place.

Anyway it all came to nothing as we got a new prime minister who didn't want to be a magician but was on a training course to be a comedian, he tried so many ways to make us laugh! 

And now we have a new government altogether who have embraced the fly on the wall style entertainment rather than the music hall act of the conservatives. Think The Osbournes and you will see what I mean. ...

A dimly lit number ten Downing street, Enter Rachel Reeves in a dressing gown and fluffy slippers, off stage Keir Starmer shouts "Rachel, have you seen my effing Armani suit, the one that bloke bought for me? And I can't find any of those posh glasses." 

Rachel replies exasperated;  "Keir, I'm too bloody busy to look now, I've got my CV to alter, AGAIN, and these expense claims don't write themselves. You'll have to get Mandelson to look for them "

A distracted Keir wanders in wearing his red silk boxer shorts with a hammer and sickle motif looking agitated; "F@#£ me Rachel, Mandelson couldn't find his arse with both hands and a mirror, that's why we sent him to bloody America. Let them look after him for a bit, have you seen my bloody tie Rachel? The one with all the flags on it, you know all the countries we welcome asylum seekers from..." fade to black 

But what about the cocaine and decapitated bats?

[Handy Don 13,144]

I’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of time living and working in London with some samplings of other parts of England.

Without taking sides, I was then, and have remained, impressed at the language skills of so many MPs--especially during the PMQ times in Parliament. (I still think it should be MsP--but what does this “Yank” know about language and acronyms?) It makes it all the more enjoyable to see stumbles like the “homeless” sign in the earlier post.

[adsm08 2,469]

1 hour ago, Handy Don said:

I’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of time living and working in London with some samplings of other parts of England.

 

 

Lucky. Three of my favorite things to study are History, old buildings, and British culture (TV, history, food, etc). I surprised the crap out of my wife a while back when I told her one of the things I wanted to do when we retire is to go live in England, somewhere in or near London, for a year and just experience it at a day to day pace.

 

That said, that event is at least 20 years from being a possibility.

Edited February 15 by adsm08