The hilarious  New York Times  bestselling phenomenon and the perfect funny gift! The Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection brings together a fresh collection of the hapless, the heedless, and the just plain foolhardy among us.  Salute the owner of an equipment training school who demonstrates the dangers of driving a forklift by failing to survive the filming of his own safety video. Gawk at the couple who go to sleep on a sloping roof. Witness the shepherd who leaves his rifle unsecured—only to be accidentally shot by one of his own flock. With over one hundred Darwin Award Winners, Honorable Mentions, and debunked Urban Legends, plus science and safety tips for avoiding the scythe of natural selection, The Darwin Awards II proves once again how uncommon common sense can be. “The Darwin Awards  is a riot to read. Deeply entertaining.”— San Francisco Weekly   "Delightfully funny,  The Darwin Awards , taken together, constitute a delicious sermon in support of common sense."— The Baltimore Sun A graduate of UC Berkeley with a degree in molecular biology,  Wendy Northcutt  began collecting the stories that make up the Darwin Awards in 1993. Her award-winning Web site www.DarwinAwards.com is one of the most popular humor pages on the Web.  The Darwin Awards have been profiled in  USA Today ,  The Wall Street Journal ,  Entertainment Weekly , and on NPR’s  All Things Considered . Wendy is the author of the international bestsellers  The Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action ,  The Darwin Awards 2: Unnatural Selection ,  The Darwin Awards 3: Survival of the Fittest,   The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design, The Darwin Awards: Next Evolution , and  The Darwin Awards: Countdown to Extinction. Chapter One Penance: Seven Deadly Sins The tree of life is self-pruning. Religions have long waged war against the seven deadly sins. Here's proof that evolution is fighting the same battle. Lust, vanity, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, and wrath: all are fatal when carried to excess. From sensual skunk play to the vanity of amateur liposuction, indulgence in the deadly vices leads to trouble. Discussion: Kismet, Karma, Destiny Are you superstitious?     We enjoy believing in abstract balancing principles. There ought to be a force that gives each what he's earned, call it kismet, karma, or destiny. And yet we also believe in the opposite—lucky slot machines and winning streaks. Don't you sometimes walk around a ladder, or kiss your exam paper for good luck? Superstitious beliefs are imbedded in our personalities.     The Darwin Awards celebrate another sort of religion—that of final justice according to the divine laws of nature. Darwin winners suffer a practical form of karma. They prove our theory that if you don't use your head to enhance your survival, you'll be fingered by the impartial hand of fate.     There is a solid basis for the "religion" of the Darwin Awards: Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. In a single lifetime one finds ample proof that natural selection leads to evolution. We've seen evolution happen before our very eyes. Broccoli, dog breeds, nectarines, and modern corn all resulted from random mutations combined with natural (or artificial) selection.     Weeds provide an example of evolution happening in your own front lawn.     Dandelions are ubiquitous and very difficult to eliminate.     A handful of wild dandelion seeds will grow into adults of assorted heights, which scatter their seeds far and wide to begin the process again. But weekly lawn mowing schedules are a new selective pressure! We created a new environmental hazard for dandelions. And they rose, or rather shrunk, to meet the challenge.     Regular cutting of lawns selects for very short dandelions, ones that hug the ground too closely to be slashed by mower blades, and send up flowers that seed within days to avoid the reaper's scythe. A new short dandelion variant is branching off the general dandelion population. Over time the lawn dandelions may well diverge from the wild dandelions, increasingly specialized for the modern lawn environment, and a new species—the lawnlion?—will dawn.     Because examples of natural selection are easy to come by, the "religion" of the Darwin Awards stands on firm scientific footing. The interesting and powerful mechanism of natural selection is a blindly omniscient tool to increase the long-term survival of the human race—and provide a measure of immortality to comfort our transient personal existence.     The stories that follow show the Darwinian repercussions to those who ignore religious strictures, and indulge in the seven deadly sins. Darwin Award: Vanity Liposuction Tragedy Unconfirmed by Darwin September 1999, New York David, a forty-four-year-old Mineola man, was more desperate to be rid of his flab than most. Why not save money and allow his friend to perform amateur liposuction on him in his garage? As you might guess, using a vacuum for liposuction is not the