Right in time for the year where we all celebrate the 125th anniversary of Charles Darwin's death, several people show their deep understanding of the evolution theory by quickly and painlessly removing themselves from the playground of evolution.

According to an article in a Malaysian newspaper a 10-year-old boy in Texas and a 9-year-old boy in Pakistan surprisingly died after reenacting Saddam Hussein's hanging. Who would have thought that a rope around your neck could be dangerous?

In a similar masterstroke a 15-year-old Indian girl hanged herself in an attempt to feel the pain Saddam Hussein felt in the seconds before his death. Worked like a charm.

All these kids had seen the hanging video on the Internet. What does this tell us? For one thing that the mechanism that YouTube uses to ensure that certain videos can only be watched by over 18-year-olds doesn't work. (Have you heard of BugMeNot?) And for another it tells us that a medium like the Internet can very well be dangerous. Just like any other medium--if you don't know how to use it. Or when's the last time you played Russian roulette after reading the memoir of a Russian army veteran?

Before I present you with another episode in my Darwin at work series let me take a minute to thank Thomas who keeps me up to date with Swiss news. I decided my life would be less stressful without hearing about the constant ranting of certain vertically challenged politicians and all the left wing parties' ideas that are beyond economical reason. Unfortunately my Swiss news boycott also makes me miss out on some great stories of the Darwin kind, but Thomas to the rescue! Here we go ...

Not everybody likes to learn about the mysteries of science; why the sky is blue, why water boils, or why Brita filters take out the chloride of drinking water. But there are certain things that everybody should pick up in one of the first chemistry classes when teachers go for impressive tricks with various substances.

One of these tricks is based on how sodium or potassium react with water. (For those of you who wagged chemistry classes: quite fiercely.)

Apparently, this simple fact slipped the mind of a 16 year old student in the Swiss town of Amriswil who tried to sneak out a bit of sodium from his chemistry class after wrapping it in a damp towel. (I'm guessing he wanted to make it explode by adding it to water later--shouldn't the damp cloth have set off the alarm bells in his head?)

Yes, you guessed it. He barely made it to the door when his little pocket bomb went off, set his clothes on fire and the resulting sodium hydroxide (literally) started biting the crap out of him. So close and he would have qualified for a Darwin Award!

I just hope the teacher called him up at the hospital to ask him how he felt--about the fact that he's flunked chemistry.

It's been a long time since I've presented the work of Darwin and I feel I owe it to this great scientist to provide you with a double episode of why Darwin will never be out of a job. :-)

The first case has to do with a woman in a wheelchair. (I can already see certain people jump up at that. No, I'm not generally making fun of people in wheelchairs, I just happen to point out that wheelchairs are being used in rather unusual ways in this country! Anyway ...) Emily Delafield must have had strong reasons when she started swinging knives and a hammer at her relatives. Whatever they were, they were so strong that even the police didn't manage to talk some sense into her, so they stunned her with a Taser. The woman was so stunned that she lost consciousness and later died at the hospital. Remember: swinging knives on wheels belongs purely in the circus.

The death of a soldier is certainly a traumatic experience for friends and relatives that can hardly be made up for by the honorable fact that a young man or woman sacrificed his/her life for the country. There is no way, however, to stretch the word "sacrifice" to apply to the case of Private Scarano, an Army recruit who died mid-March from an overdose of fentanyl, an extremly strong pain relief drug. When he died, the said soldier had a blood concentration three times the fatal dosage. He had repeatedly abused the drug, was warned by fellow soldiers about that fact, and still decided it was a good idea, to rip off his three-day skin patch and eating the drug directly. It did help with the pain.

The honor of the debut in my Darwin at work series goes to a role model. To a teacher, to be more exact. But since teachers are role models, the categorization fits quite well. Or does it?

Robert Colla, a teacher in the Californian town of Ventura, has proven that even teachers never stop learning. The difference between appropriate objects to squish a bug and less appropriate ones is a subtle one, after all. Live shells definitely belong into the latter one.

According to CNN, Robert tried to squish something that was crawling about his desk using a shell that he had been using as a paperweight for years. The thing blew up and his right hand was severed.

I guess he got the bug, too. Man vs. Bug: 1-1

This category is not about evolution. It's not about bees and flowers either. And it is not for the faint of mind. So what is it about, then? It's about Charles Darwin's principle of evolution by natural selection.

I was inspired when I first came across the Darwin Awards a few years back. The Darwin Awards "salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally kill themselves in really stupid ways." Their website is a highly recommended lecture for everyone with a satirical vein.

Darwin at work is along the same lines. It's about stupid people hurting themselves, steadily heading towards not being selected by nature, and stupid people who have achieved little more than exactly that. Be prepared for evolution's best stories.

At this point I advise the highly sensitive and life-affirming readers of my blog to head over to California's best stories instead. For the rest of you, enjoy and stay selected!