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My daughter recently gave me a book with clippings from her local Portland, CT paper, along with her funny comments on each story. We share an appreciation for the ridiculous things people do in life, proving once and for all that one commodity that we will always have in abundance is stupidity. I wonder what goes through people's heads just before they throw their hats into the ring for the annual Darwin Awards. Is there a thought process that can actually lead them to conclude that what they are about to do is a good idea? Do they lack that second sense that alerts most of us to the fact that skating past that "Thin Ice" sign is a poor decision? Here are a few of my favorites.

A 19-year old music student borrowed the cello of another student and then lost it. There are several actions the young man could have taken at this point to resolve the problem, but the one he chose was to stab the other student to death! Excuse me, did I miss connecting a dot somewhere. How in the wide world of sports do you go from losing someone's musical instrument to killing her? Fortunately the killing never took place. The the would-be killer fled the victim's home and deliberately tried to crash his car and kill himself. The local East Hampton Police Chief, clearly a master of understatement said: "This appears to be a unique situation." Well just in case it isn't Chief, maybe you should assign a crime code number to describe it. "Dispatch to car 54: we have a 219 in progress on Main Street (citizen threatened at knife point over missing cello). Please respond."

How about the guy who broke into a local home and was in the middle of looting it when the home owner walked in. Most of us, if placed in the situation this burglar found himself in, would mutter something like "Oh s**t, and run past the homeowner to our waiting car. This Einstein calmly walks out of the house carrying some stolen coins and continues strolling along on Middle Haddam Road until police arrive and pick him up. The burglar explained that he thought he was in a friend's house (that sounds plausible). So if I understand this, it's your friend you meant to burglarize! Police explained that there had been a string of burglaries in the area lately, and it was just the heroin addicts. Phew, I was worried there for a minute.

The Connecticut Lyme Riders, Inc. decided to host an 80-mile motorcycle ride through southeastern Connecticut as a way to raise funds for Lyme disease. Each participant and passenger was charged a fee to participate. So far, so good. Problem is the route of the ride included rest stops at The Pour House, The Lyme Tavern, Family Corner Restaurant and Ernie's place, all bars. Somehow I can't imagine a gang of bikers and their bitches sidling up to Ernie's Bar and saying: "Just club soda for us Ernie, we got a charity ride to finish." I love that these rugged souls took the time to schedule an event to raise money for a good cause. Just a suggestion here: maybe next year they should make Mothers Against Drunk Drivers the beneficiary of their efforts.

It's hard to find any definitive research on American IQ trends over the past 100 years. One study I saw on average IQ ranked the United States at number 19 in the world, behind such countries as China, Japan, South Korea, and most industrialized European countries. Just from what I see around me, I'll go out on a limb and say we're getting dumber as a country. My totally non-scientific research consists of reading stories in newspapers about the incredibly stupid things people do. I'm not talking about book learning here; our clueless educators have a solution to that problem...they just keep lowering the standards and patting themselves on the back. I'm talking about our population becoming so stupid that iron manufacturers have to put warning labels on their product cautioning users against ironing clothes while they are wearing them!

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