College students were asked to read a story about a rather daft person, and then take a test. They did worse on that test than a control group that read a story about a non-idiot:

Sixty-three Austrian students read “Slow on the Uptake,” about Meier, who wakes, is confused by an adage on his calendar, gets drunk, attends a soccer match and misses the outcome because he brawls. The students either summarized the story or underlined passages where Meier differed from them. A control group of 18 read a story with an innocuous protagonist.

Afterward, on a difficult test covering geography, science and the arts, the students who had read about Meier but not underlined how he differed from them scored from 30% to 32%, compared to about 37% for the control group and for students who distanced themselves from the character.

Hollywood mentioned this tendency a few years ago.

Link -via Althouse | Image: Despair

Darwining oneself isn’t limited to toothless rednecks who want you to hold their beer so you can watch this… plenty of smart, talented people have met their end in incredibly dumb ways as well. Here’s 10 of them, in alphabetical order.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by cbz3000.

Zookeepers in Cairo are charging visitors to actually go inside the animal cages. Hugging bears, feeding crocodiles, pestering seals and provoking lions can all be achieved for under ten bucks!

I don’t know what’s worse, the exploitation of these poor animals or the stupidity of the patrons for getting inside an enclosure with a live bear.

Photo: Nasser Nuri/Reuters

An Egyptian family asked to play with the lions. Two dollars, said the zookeeper. The mother nodded and the zoo employee motioned to them to come to a side door away from the row of cages and mesmerized onlookers.

The zookeeper looked nervous, peering up and down the sidewalk. Seeing none of the authorities, he swung the door open and beckoned the family of four inside. By the time the family had entered, the zookeeper had grabbed a lion cub and hoisted it into the arms of the startled teenage son. Another lion cub looked on from a few feet away.

The family posed for photos. The cub snarled with displeasure.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by bethtucker.

Some people out there are fearless. Take this guy for instance; he doesn’t seem to be the least bit distracted by the vehicle that’s passing him and at the same time, being video taped. I wonder what possesses a person to do such a thing.

Video: LiveLeak