CHAPTER 8
Miscellaneous
Some innovative Darwin Awards don’t fall into predictable categories. Enjoy the miscellaneous methods man has invented to bedevil himself, using thallium, an ice maker, trees, scaffolding, a confession, a nail gun, a homemade parachute, chocolate sauce, electromagnets, an innocent paper-towel dispenser, or an auger—two different ways. But first, get ready to make friends with your worst enemy in a scientific discussion of fat….
DISCUSSION: THE SKINNY ON FAT
Annaliese Beery, Science Writer
Most people hate fat—some even die getting rid of it (for instance, by garage liposuction).* The death rate in liposuction surgery is twenty to sixty times the death rate of all hospital operations, and 2 percent of gastric-bypass patients die within a few months of surgery. As sobering as these statistics are, they are dwarfed by the death toll from fat’s indirect consequences: clogged arteries, high blood pressure, and heart disease—the most common cause of death in the United States. So it may come as a surprise that fat is one of the most useful molecules in your body. Without fat you wouldn’t have enough energy to sleep through the night! With a whopping nine calories per gram, fats (also called lipids) are the most efficient storage molecule in your body, containing large amounts of energy in a small space. When babies are born with a disease that prevents them from digesting fats, they must be awakened at regular intervals to be fed nonfatty foods, or kept on IV glucose, or else they will run out of energy between meals. Failure to metabolize fat is one of the causes of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, where apparently healthy babies die inexplicably during the night.
You need fats as a day-to-day energy carrier, too. Just consider what it would take to live without them: In order to carry the amount of energy using protein or carbohydrates, a 70-kilogram (154-pound) person would have to weigh more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds). And that extra weight would not be nearly as cushioning and insulating as fat.
Structure Leads to Function:
Making Margarine
Fat’s high energy comes from its molecular structure. Like wax and gasoline, lipids consist of long chains of carbon and hydrogen that can be slowly “burned” by your body to yield energy, water, and carbon dioxide. Lipids come in different lengths and can be saturated or unsaturated, which affects the shape of the chain and what it does in your body.
Each carbon atom in a lipid chain can hold up to two hydrogens, and a saturated fat is full of them. In unsaturated fat, double bonds between carbons replace some of the hydrogens. If there is one double bond, the fat is monounsaturated. Polyunsaturated fats have multiple double bonds and fewer hydrogens.
Saturated animal fats, like butter and lard, are solid at room temperature because the flat fat molecules pack together tightly and stick to each other. Vegetable fats are generally unsaturated and full of double bonds, giving them a kinked molecular shape; they don’t pack together well and remain liquid, so you have to keep them in a bottle.
If you want your vegetable oil to be solid, like margarine, you can either chill it or get rid of the kinks by adding hydrogens. Voila! Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils have more single bonds and are solid at room temperature.
Saturation also plays a role in your arteries, where different shapes of fat flow differently through the blood. Kinked, unsaturated fats don’t stick to blood vessels, because blood pushes against their exposed surface and moves them along to where they are needed. Saturated fats, on the other hand, lie flat and occasionally stick to the sides of blood vessels, forming arteriosclerotic plaques. Autopsies of healthy soldiers show that a man in his mid-twenties has usually lost an astonishing 30 percent of the diameter of his large arteries to fatty plaques!
Our cell membranes are made of lipids, too, and once again saturation is key. A combination of saturated and unsaturated lipids allows membranes to be semifluid at room temperature, but they are prone to solidify at cold temperatures, like bacon grease stored in the refrigerator. Frostbite damage begins when oxygen can no longer diffuse through solidified cell membranes. After prolonged exposure to cold, the coldest, outermost cells may die.
So why don’t reindeer get frostbite? After all, they live in the arctic, and reindeer get seriously cold feet! The chemical structure of cell membranes in a reindeer leg shows an amazing adaptation: As you progress down the leg toward the hoof, a higher percentage of the lipids in the cell membranes are unsaturated, so they can stay fluid at very low temperatures.
Transport: Oil and Water Don’t Mix
Anyone who’s made salad dressing knows that fats don’t dissolve in water, and they don’t dissolve well in your blood, either. Organisms solve this problem with fat chaperones, which are large, water-soluble proteins called lipoproteins. Fats are stored in your body as triglycerides, which are made up of three lipids. When a lipoprotein reaches a target cell, triglycerides must be broken apart into their component lipid chains, pulled across the cell membrane, and reassembled inside.
Fats also travel in the reverse direction—out of storage in fatty tissue and into circulation—to provide energy for other cells. If fat gets mobilized from storage and isn’t used, it simply circulates until it is reincorporated into a fat cell. But during the time it spends in circulation, it has a small chance of adhering to an artery wall, potentially causing a heart attack or stroke. Doctors would like to know what makes this artery-clogger mobilize.
Your body’s fat cells respond to cues that indicate the body is low on energy, or that the body is about to need more energy than usual. One of these cues is adrenaline, released as part of a stress response. While this stress response is not necessarily useful in an office job, in nature it prepares you to run or fight, so adrenaline mobilizes fat for action. Caffeine has many of the same effects as adrenaline. For this reason, marathon runners often consume caffeine an hour before they begin a race; this puts fat into the bloodstream so athletes can begin burning it for fuel as soon as they begin running. This helps their carbohydrate supply last longer. With only fat to rely on for energy, a runner will feel sluggish and low on energy. Without a caffeine boost, they “hit the wall” earlier and get stuck burning only fat, which is slower to metabolize than carbohydrates.
Most people who drink caffeine are not preparing for a marathon, so the circulating fat doesn’t do much good. Consider, for example, a pilot’s workday. During takeoff, one of the more stressful parts of a flight, his adrenaline levels are high, resulting in elevated fat circulation. If he drinks coffee first, his circulating fat levels will be even higher. Unlike the marathon runner, though, he’ll sit for hours on end, causing fat to circulate without a target before ultimately returning to his fat cells. This losing combination means it’s a good thing pilots are required to get an electrocardiogram every year after age forty.
If energy is the currency your body uses to perform its functions, then fat is a savings account. It’s bad to have large amounts in circulation in your blood, but fat cells are a great way to store energy that will ultimately be converted into other forms, spent, or hoarded for a rainy day. Given how essential fats are, it’s a shame they have such a bad reputation. Still, a gallon of ice cream will probably do you more harm than good.
REFERENCES:
Lipid reactivity to stress: Stoney, Catherine M.; Niaura, Raymond; Bausserman, Linda; Matacin, Mala. 1999. “Comparison of chronic and acute stress responses in middle-aged airline pilots.” Health Psychology. Vol. 18(3) 241–250.
Hazel, J.R.; Williams, E.E. 1990. Prog Lipid Res 29(3):167–227. “The role of alterations in membrane lipid composition in enabling physiological adaptation of organisms to their physical environment.”
Senault, C.; Yazbeck, J.; Goubern, M.; Portet, R.; Vincent, M.; Gallay, J. 1990. “Relation between membrane phospholipid composition, fluidity and function in mitochondria of rat brown adipose tissue. Effect of thermal adaptation and essential fatty acid deficiency.” Biochim Biophys Acta 1023(2):283–289.
This fin
al chapter contains a hodgepodge of stories, with one underlying theme: They are all examples that one should avoid emulating, if one wants to keep the body’s metabolism running efficiently—or running at all!
DARWIN AWARD: WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!
Unconfirmed by Darwin
11 MAY 2004, STELLENBOSCH, SOUTH AFRICA
The mighty oak trees of Stellenbosch, a city near Cape Town, were planted more than three hundred years ago. In recent years, they have begun to succumb to disease. The city has been cutting them down and planting new trees.
A man was sitting at a café, watching a team with loud chain saws working to remove a tree whose center had become dangerously decayed. The arborists had marked the danger zone with red-and-white barrier tape and posted notices of danger, taking every precaution to prevent damage to property or persons.
Just as the tree was ready to fall, and the chain-saw operator was making the final cut, our man jumped up from his seat in the café. He ducked under the safety tape and started hurrying up the pavement to meet his girlfriend at a nearby shop. Despite the workers’ frantic shouts, he continued toward the tree that by this time was falling as planned.
The chain-saw operator tried a desperate tackle to get him out the way, but it was too late. Missing the would-be rescuer by inches, the tree landed on the man’s head, killing him instantly. And that is how one can qualify for a Darwin Award simply by walking under a tree.
Reference: Eikestad Nuus
DARWIN AWARD: BANNISTER TO HEAVEN
Confirmed by Darwin
20 JULY 2004, TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA
The Kleman Plaza parking garage has the ideal bannister for a long slide, spiraling around an open stairwell all the way down from the fifth floor without a break. Brian, twenty-four, was a real-life hero who had saved a friend from drowning, but friends said he was also a “big fan of reality TV and high-risk stunts.” The bannister was his big chance!
But just sliding down a five-story bannister was nowhere near risky enough for Brian, so he planned to leap onto the bannister to begin his slide. He ran, he jumped…and he sailed completely over it, plunging fifty-two feet to the bottom of the stairwell. A friend fondly reminisced that “Brian had done crazier things than this” before. But this was Brian’s first stunt spectacular enough to win a Darwin Award.
According to a police investigation, “alcohol may have been a factor.”
Reference: Tallahassee Democrat, WCTV
DARWIN AWARD: FLYING DUTCHMAN
Unconfirmed by Darwin
8 APRIL 2004, THE NETHERLANDS
The Martinitower is the tallest building in the north part of The Netherlands, rising ninety-six meters above the polders. High winds blast the top, making it a frightening place for some sight-seers. Fortunately, a balustrade protects visitors from accidentally being blown off, and built-in seats allow them to rest their weary bodies after the onerous climb to the top. But these safety measures were mere inconveniences to a twenty-year-old man who decided to impress his girlfriend with his devil-may-care nonchalance. He climbed up on the balustrade and swung his legs to the outside. Then, aided by a gust of wind, he “slipped away,” according to his father, who added, “he just liked to show off a little.”
Reference: Algemeen Dagblad
DARWIN AWARD: CAUGHT IN THE AUGER
Unconfirmed by Darwin
31 JULY 1995, CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND
“Welcome to the Machine.”—Pink Floyd
An ice maker may seem innocuous, but when it’s big enough to walk into—for example, one that supplies ice to fishing boats—it can be so dangerous that safety procedures and fail-safe devices are required. So it was a bit of a surprise when employees at a fish-processing plant heard screams emanating from inside the giant ice maker.
An employee had been running the machine when the flow of ice jammed. Access to the machine’s auger chamber was restricted, and employees are trained never to enter the chamber while the auger is running. It would be easy enough to ignore the warning signs, but it is hard to get around another safety feature: The auger will not run unless the operator holds down a foot pedal outside the chamber. Take your foot off the pedal and the machine shuts down.
There was no way the operator could run the auger and also enter the chamber. Or so it seemed, but one enterprising employee found a way. He laid a heavy piece of metal on the foot pedal to keep the auger running while he entered the chamber to clear the ice jam. He was caught by the swirling auger and drawn inevitably, and fatally, into the ice machine.
Ironically, the employee had helped negotiate a labor contract stipulating that workers should scrupulously follow all safety procedures and abide by the company’s operating rules.
Reference: The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand
DARWIN AWARD: PANCAKE THIEF
Unconfirmed by Darwin
JANUARY 2003, NEW DELHI, INDIA
Regarding accidental deaths during the construction of a subway, the New York Times wrote, “One of those killed was an unlucky thief who tried to steal braces holding up a concrete slab; it fell and killed him.”
Reference: New York Times
DARWIN AWARD: ALL WOUND UP
Unconfirmed by Darwin
28 APRIL 2005, MOSCOW, RUSSIA
A construction worker drilling the foundation of a parking garage project on Starobitsevskaya Street noticed something shiny stuck to the swiftly rotating auger. He took a closer look but still couldn’t identify the shiny object, so he reached down to grab it. Unfortunately, his jacket caught on the auger, winding his hand, his arm, and then his whole body into the apparatus. By the time his fellow workers could shut down the rig, “only the man’s legs below the knees remained intact,” according to the daily newspaper.
Reference: Moskovskiy Komsomolets
DARWIN AWARD: CATAPULT TO GLORY
Unconfirmed by Darwin
1987, MARGATE, ENGLAND
In 1987, the U.K. saw its most violent storm in three hundred fifty years. Winds exceeded ninety miles per hour, and an incredible amount of damage was done to property and people throughout the U.K. Millions of trees were uprooted by the hurricane-force gales.
In Margate in the county of Kent, one unfortunate homeowner had a property bordered by three massive poplars. The wind had felled one, which came to rest across his back garden. Another poplar had been bent over just far enough to lodge its top under the soffit of his roof. The foliage was blocking his upstairs bedroom windows; something had to be done.
This chap did not own a chain saw, nor could he reach the trunk of the tree from the house, even when leaning out the window. So he decided to shinny up and saw off the top while sitting astride the trunk, with his feet wedged against the gutter of his roof. He had plenty of time to reflect on the wisdom of his position, as it took him twenty minutes of sawing before the bent tree—which experts estimate held the energy equivalent to a small field gun—parted company with the portion trapped by the soffit, and sprang back upright.
* * *
Urban Legend? Many argue that the physics doesn’t work; that there is no way a bent poplar has enough latent energy to rocket a human a distance of a mile. Although the distance the man supposedly traveled is inaccurate, the other details are plausible. It may be a true story with one exaggerated fact. We await confirmation.
* * *
His body was found in a neighbor’s garden over a mile away. The police surgeon stated that his neck probably broke during the whiplash and he would blessedly have known nothing of the impact with the ground.
Reference: Various Margate newspapers in 1986
DARWIN AWARD: SIZZLING SCAFFOLDING
Unconfirmed by Darwin
1980S, TEXAS
At the town fairgrounds, some buildings were in need of a coat of paint, so local contractors were hired to do the job.
Between the buildings was an angled culvert, designed to drain rainwater away from the buildings. Because of the slope, the whe
eled painter scaffolding tended to roll downhill, so the painters removed the wheels from the scaffolding. They were in the process of moving the scaffolding when the metal structure met a transformer. The painters were killed.
The story made the headlines. The town was abuzz with talk of the tragedy, how it had come to pass, and whether the city was liable for damages. The city officials decided they needed to conduct an investigation.
With much fanfare, they arrived at the scene of the incident, prepared to personally re-create the circumstances. Two officials grabbed the scaffolding in the exact same location as the two painters, began to move it…and were promptly electrocuted.
Reference: A Texas newspaper
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READER COMMENTS:
“Stay tuned for the next investigation.”
“Is there any way we can get all city, county, and state officials to investigate accidents in the same manner?”
The Darwin Awards 4: Intelligent Design Page 16