Part eugenic fantasy, part sophomoric sick humor, the Darwin Awards is a page that likes to laugh at other people's deaths, and which demands to be intellectually admired for doing so. For those who haven't come across this "meme" (despite having been thoroughly disowned by their inventor, "memes" are still big news among the half-educated pop science crowd that makes up the Awards' audience), the Darwin Awards exist to award "stupid people whose stupidity leads to their killing themselves, thereby removing themselves from the gene pool". In other words, as we say, the extremely intelligent neurobiologist who runs the Darwin Awards

1. Thinks it's funny when other people die and
2. Regards it as desirable to remove genes for "stupidity" (as defined by her) from future generations.

Welcome to the wonderful, somewhat racially charged world of pop sociobiology. We wonder whether the taxpayers of California (or indeed the students of Northcutt's alma mater at Berkeley, who are not exactly renowned for their lack of militancy or their sympathy for eugenics) are grateful at the use to which an expensive training in molecular biology is being put..

Of course, Wendy Northcutt is by no means as smart as she thinks she is. She doesn't appear inclined to sully her hands with anything so vulgar as mere consistency in her coffin-mocking and grave-pissing. It's not uncommon to see someone receive an award for "removing themselves from the gene pool" in the context of an anecdote which makes it perfectly clear that they were at the time of death in possession of a fully functioning spouse, child or even grandchild (who can of course go and fuck themselves if they're expecting any sympathy from our pal at the Eugenics ^H^H^H^H^HDarwin Awards). And the assumption that an eccentric death is a sign of congenital stupidity is made without any support at all. After all, Benjamin Franklin used to be in the habit of flying a kite with a copper string into thunderstorms - presumably if he hadn't been quite so lucky and hadn't survived, he'd have received an Award and a sarcastic homily from Wendy Northcutt.

In any case, there's a logical inconsistency here. Either stupidity is genetic, or it isn't. If it isn't, Wendy Northcutt is wrong, and can fuck off. But if it is, then it's rather like being black, or (maybe) gay, and it's both pointless and unpleasant to mock people for it. As far as we can tell at adequacy.org, the stupid have to put up with enough shit in their lives without the Darwin Awards posse adding to it.

But the real reason for heaping our disapproval on the Darwin Awards is their disgusting abuse of the name of Charles Darwin. Because Darwin's theory of evolution had no place in it for such concepts as "improving the gene pool" by systematically exterminating the stupid, and Wendy Northcutt either knows this, or ought to know it by virtue of their training as a scientist. Darwinian fitness is identically, logically equivalent to success in reproduction and nothing else. Not physical strength, not beauty and certainly not intelligence. Any and all prereproductive deaths are equally examples of Darwinian selection pressure. For a trained scientist to select ad hoc some eugenic selection criteria, to claim that there is significance to "improvements in the gene pool" due to selection for that criterion rather than any other, and to have the temerity to pass it off under the name of Darwin is a disgusting piece of Orwellian doublethink which puts Wendy Northcutt not very far above the Creation Scientists in the opinion of this columnist.

[Sidebar:- I am sending a version of this essay to Wendy Northcutt, and anticipate her replying that the Darwin Awards are "satirical". No dice fella; they aren't. According to the entire tradition of satire from Juvenal to Swift to Mencken to adequacy.org itself, the purpose of satire is to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable"; to comment on the vices and follies of society's ruling class. Harsh words aimed at the professional standards of two scientists pushing pop eugenics may or may not fall into that definition; pissing on the graves of the recently dead for cheap laughs certainly doesn't. Alternatively, satire is aimed at exposing hypocrisy, but your targets aren't hypocritical; they're just dead. Your awards, in so much as they are humorous at all, are sick sophomore humor, and the ascription of scientific content to them cannot possibly be portrayed as anything so well thought out as satire. Lamer]

And of course, the joke is doubly on Wendy Northcutt, because the kind of intelligence she seems to value doesn't really function all that well at all as a tool of sexual selection. Notoriously, having a size 16 brain doesn't bring in the babes and/or studs, and boasting about one's intellectual superiority even less so. The kind of personality displayed by the sort of person who laughs at the recently dead for not being clever enough is probably more effective when used as a contraceptive than the rhythm method. So ironically, by telling their predominantly sophomore science geek audience base that it's OK to be a nasty, intellectually snobbish little prick, the author of the Darwin Awards is removing 'intelligent' individuals from the gene pool far more efficiently than the assembly of gas explosions and failed bank robberies they document are doing the job on the opposition. Unless, that is, you count the 'gene pool' which builds up in the bathrooms of the science faculty dorm rooms on Friday nights when Dawson's Creek is on, which frankly, we don't.

So it is with this in mind that we at Adequacy.org, in a spirit of equal mean-mindedness and grave-pissing, announce the launch of:

The Real Darwin Awards

The idea behind the Real Darwin Awards is simple; to reward people who represent the removal from the gene pool of individuals who just didn't seem to be cut out for the Mating Game. With, it cannot be denied, a bias toward giving awards to the kind of person who has, during their spell on Spaceship Earth, given a hypocritical snicker at the "removal from the gene pool" of some poor boob, while not exactly getting a whole load of gene-propagating action themselves.

Specifically, the award is to be given to members of Mensa, the American Secular Humanist Association or similar bodies for the self-styled intellectually superior, who end up committing suicide because of an inability to 'fit in' socially due to their high intelligence. It shouldn't be too difficult to collect the first few award candidates; simply monitoring traffic on a couple of Mensa mailing lists, or Jon Katz's Hellmouth series on Slashdot seems to throw up every couple of months, the tragic story of some kid who made the Math Olympiad, but never got a girl, had no friends and was picked on, and ending up tragically taking his own life. We'll be collecting a few of these over the next year, ready for a grand Awards Ceremony where we email the family and online associates of the deceased with a few choice pieces of cruel mockery of particular foibles of the unfortunate youngster ("Perhaps if he hadn't spent so much time in his room hacking genetic algorithms, he'd have managed to make his own contribution to the biggest genetic optimiser of them all before he shot himself", or something - as you can see, we're still in the early stages). Maybe we can even get our nasty, ill-considered remarks at the expense of the dead collected and published in book form.

Adequacy.org - we're just as bad as the people we attack, but at least we're intellectually consistent. Can Wendy Northcutt say the same?