OFF: More On Darwinism...

Stier, Christopher Christopher.Stier at LEXIS-NEXIS.COM
Fri Jun 14 11:22:00 EDT 1996


OK, if you're not sick of the JATO story yet here's a bit more on it.
It's snipped out of a longer article I found on the LEXIS-NEXIS service
(if anyone wants to see the whole thing just let me know, there's sort
of an amusing bit about Neil Armstrong, the moon and oral sex...) but on
to JATOs:

 1ST STORY of Level 1 printed in FULL format.

                   Copyright 1996 The Times Mirror Company
                               Los Angeles Times

                    February 27, 1996, Tuesday, Home Edition

SECTION: Life & Style; Part E; Page 1; View Desk

LENGTH: 1293 words

HEADLINE: NET FICTION;
TRENDS: WHEN URBAN LEGENDS HIT THE INTERNET, LOOK OUT WORLD -- THE
RESULTING
'NETMYTHS' MAY BE IMPOSSIBLE TO DEBUNK.

BYLINE: By TRACY THOMPSON, THE WASHINGTON POST



   Debunking Netmyths isn't always easy. Some come with an impressive,
if Dave
Barry-ish, aura of authenticity. For example, the Darwin Award story.

   The Darwin Award, presented as a mordant take on real life, is
supposedly
given each year to the person who does the human gene pool a favor by
eliminating himself in the dumbest possible way.

   The 1994 award supposedly went to the person responsible for the pile
of
smoldering metal some Arizona Highway Patrol officers found embedded in
the side
of a cliff in the desert, at a point where the road curved. The
smoldering metal
turned out to be the remains of a car.

   The Arizona crime lab, the story goes, figured out how it all
happened:
Somebody had gotten hold of a JATO, or jet-assisted takeoff unit, also
known as
a solid fuel rocket. This person had driven his Chevrolet Impala out
into the
desert, attached the JATO units to the back of his car, and fired that
baby up.
When he hit the curve, the crime lab estimated, he was going between 250
and

PAGE    4
                      Los Angeles Times, February 27, 1996

300 mph, a speed at which the ordinary Chevrolet Impala becomes a little
hard to
steer. The Chevy's brakes were completely burned away, according to the
crime
lab, indicating the driver may have had second thoughts about his
experiment.
Too late: Car meets cliff.

   Yet despite the reference to the "Arizona State Patrol" and the
authentic-sounding reference to JATO units, this story is not true.
That's
according to a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Public Safety,
who should
know.

   "We get a call on that about every 90 days," says Sgt. Dave Myers.
"It keeps
us on the map."



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