Risk Assessment

I'll make this quick; as such, it might not be especially articulate, but I'm sure it'll get the point across nicely.

There's a guy named Ken Barnes who is at this very moment floating alone in choppy seas off the coast of South America on board a small boat whose engine has failed. He's slightly injured and he's almost out of food, surviving only on a few Pop-tarts, or so he says by satellite phone.

The Chilean Navy is now rushing to save him.

Needless to say, Ken's plan of sailing around the world alone has hit a bit of a snag.

He set sail from Southern California -- which shocks me not in the least -- last October, with the intention of following in the vaunted footsteps of Magellan, were it the case that Magellan had packed with him an ample supply of Pop-tarts, a satellite phone and of course been very, very stupid.

Now, once again, for the third time in a month, a whole lot of people are being forced to risk their own lives to rescue someone whose lack of good sense had pretty much predetermined his own extinction from day one. The most egregious example recently has been the absurdly dangerous mission to find three stranded mountain climbers who were foolish enough to try to make it to the top of Mt. Hood in Oregon while a snow storm was heading their way.

These are the kinds of people who millennia ago would've perished strictly as a matter of natural selection, but now thanks to the technology and willingness we possess to consistently save their dumb asses, they have the ability not only to continue living among us but to eventually procreate and raise little idiots of their own. I have no doubt that our seemingly heroic and benevolent actions are in fact creating some kind of frightening butterfly effect of evolution which will inevitably culminate in the entire human race having the median IQ of a snapping turtle.

Ken's girlfriend back in SoCal has said about her intrepid beau, "He can sail, but he's never doing this again. His life is too important."

No, actually -- it isn't.