Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2 (3 page)

       
•
  
Cynics of the world unite—sculpt a hammer and sickle entirely out of press-on nails.

       
•
  
Get your mitts on a pop-up book featuring a knife-fight, heroin overdose, bombing, and cannibalism, you know, for the kids.

       
•
  
Slice a banana before peeling it. Don't destroy the peel or banana.

       
•
  
Create a meal that breaks the rules of as many religions as possible. Provide textual evidence of the rules, and the judges mean primary sources.

       
•
  
Eat one Krispy Kreme glazed doughnut in ten seconds. You have one try. You have no milk. (No mention of coffee though. Hmmmmm.)

       
•
  
Bring a tire. On it, fit as many team members as you can. In diapers.

Source:
http://scavhunt.uchicago.edu

 

T
hrough the years,
America has always turned to its fraternities as the frontline laboratories for incomprehensibly stupid acts. Be it swallowing goldfish, jamming pledges into telephone booths, or setting new records in the highly competitive field of undergraduate emergency stomach evacuations due to alcohol poisoning, everyone breathes a little easier knowing that the boys in the frats are hard at work.

But then came the last couple decades, and universities cracked down on undergraduate stupidity. In these uncertain times, could fraternities be relied upon to maintain the noble tradition of rampaging stupidity that is their very birthright?

The answer comes from the University of Missouri–Columbia chapter of Kappa Alpha. Among the various accouterments of the KA house was a cannon, which according to legend dated back to Civil War times. The cannon hadn't seen much action recently—the Civil War is long over, even in Missouri—and some of the brothers apparently thought this was a real shame. The boys didn't happen to have any cannon shot or black powder handy (there's never a cannonball around when you need one), but they did happen to have fireworks. Lots of fireworks. Because what's a fraternity without colorful explosives? The boys from Kappa Alpha stuffed that Civil War-era cannon full of fireworks and let her rip.

So what happened? Well, for starters, the cannon's not there any more. Well,
parts
of it are. But other parts of the cannon were flung across the street and into an apartment
complex, blowing out windows, tearing holes into floors and ceilings, and destroying various objects. Chunks of metal were also embedded into the brick of the apartment complex. Fortunately no chunks of metal were embedded into human beings, either at the fraternity house or the apartment complex, but that probably has more to do with luck than anything else.

The national organization of Kappa Alpha, which was shocked,
shocked
to discover stupidity going on at one of its chapters, immediately suspended the Missouri–Columbia house and noted on its Web site that the chapter's president and vice president were facing charges. Kappa Alpha also noted it would be conducting its own investigation. We understand double-secret probation will not be on the plea bargaining table.

Source: Associated Press,
Kappaalphaorder.org

 

R
emember the golden age of Internet plagiarism,
when you could just go online and cut-and-paste willy-nilly for whatever paper you were writing at the moment? Yeah, well, it's been over for, like, a couple of years now. Most seem to have caught on to either that a) it's morally wrong or b) college professors can use
Google.com
just as well as anyone, so this bit of news should come as no surprise. But there are always stragglers.

Like “Ben,” a student at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK. The day before Ben was going to get his degree in English, he was informed that in fact, his diploma would be withheld, on account of Ben's plagiarism. Apparently the University of Kent is under the opinion that if you don't actually write your papers, you shouldn't get credit for them. How wacky!

Ben's response was to sue. He didn't deny he rampantly plagiarized—indeed, the results would have been grim if he had—but he claimed he was never told plagiarism was, you know, bad. “I can see there is evidence I have gone against the rules,” Ben said. “If they had pulled me up with my first essay at the beginning and warned me of the problems and consequences, it would be fair enough. But all my essays were handed back with good marks and no one spotted it.” In other words, Ben shouldn't be penalized because he managed to get away with breaking the rules for so long.

University officials noted that there were places where the university clearly spelled out that plagiarism was a naughty thing to do—for example, in the university handbook, issued to all students, as well as the English department's handbook, provided to all students who majored in that subject. In other words, to borrow a phrase from the geek world, this is another case of “RTFM,” short for “Read the Freakin' Manual.” One ought to be able to expect at least that much out of an English major.

Source: BBC

 

I
t's not often that a college student
will actually want to go out of his or her way to become the most unpopular person on campus. But if it's the weekend and you don't have anything better to do, you can follow the path of “Brad” of the University of Maryland, College Park, campus.

As a bit of background, the university had a computer program called Direct Connect, which allowed people all over the Maryland computer network to share files (and by “share files,” you can understand this to mean “massive egregious copyright violations as every student on the network swaps music and movies with everyone else”). The University of Maryland has sternly warned the students on the network that if copyright holders chose to sue them, that the students were on their own.

Well, as a prank, Brad—by all indications a devotee of the file sharing system himself—sent out a note to some friends saying that he'd tipped off the suits at the RIAA (the music industry watchdog group who is famously suing downloaders left and right) of all the copyright violations on Direct Connect. The e-mail, it turns out, was a prank. Ha! Ha! Ha! Brad, in fact, never alerted the RIAA at all. However, the Maryland student who ran Direct Connect on the Maryland network was not aware that the e-mail was all good, clean, geeky fun. And so, he shut down Direct Connect, depriving 25,000 undergraduates and 10,000 grad students of their infinite jukebox and cineplex.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that Brad instantly became the most hated man in College Park once news of the failed joke got out. All over campus, fliers went up that said “Can't Get on Direct Connect? Say Thanks to Brad.” They included his picture, his e-mail address, IM sign-on, physical address, and phone number. He received tons of threats and hate mail; Brad even filed an assault complaint after he was pushed around a bit. Let's just say until the whole thing got cleared up, Brad probably spent a lot of time under his bed and not answering the banging at his door. We also don't expect he'll be going back for reunions.

Brad's lesson—on the whole, people love pranks, especially when they involve a cow. But mess with their “free” music and movies? They'll hunt you down and kill you. Really, a lesson for us all.

Source:
Baltimore Sun,
DiamondbackOnline.com

 

D
id you know that in England,
a “flashlight” is known as a “torch”? We're not exactly sure why that is—after all, there was a perfect good meaning for the word “torch” already, namely, “that stick with fire on the end.” But you know the British. Just because they
invent
a language they think they know how to
use
it. Anyway, remember this little fact about flashlights.

Now, come with us to England, where “Brian,” a student at Bath Spa University College (speaking of odd language structure—Bath Spa University College? Does everyone there major in redundancy?) had lost his shoe. He knew it was somewhere in his room—probably under his bed—but he couldn't see it anywhere. He peered under his bed, but it was dark under there. He needed some extra light. “I didn't have a torch but I had a lighter and I used that,” Brian later told the local newspaper.

Now, let's review what we have so far: a cigarette lighter, which while indeed illuminating, is also an open flame. This open flame was then thrust under a bed, made up of a flammable mattress (and possibly an equally flammable box-spring), into a space filled with dust bunnies, shoes, and other kindling-like objects. Not an ideal spot for an open flame at all.

Put all of that together, and suddenly he had a hot time under the bed, and not the
good
kind of hot time. No, we're talking
actual
fire. Brian and his roommates tried to douse the
flames, but the smoke got to them and they vacated the premises. Brian ended up burning his room to a crisp and otherwise causing structural damage to the house he and his roommates rented.

So, if we were in jolly old England, we could say, in amusingly arch fashion, if only Brian had had a torch, he wouldn't have torched his house.

Source:
The Chronicle
(Bath, UK)