Dead Pool 2nd October 2016

Welcome my morbid minions, to a jam-packed edition full of nothing. No points to be shared, no stories to be told. The evil flying monkeys must be flown, as nothing seemed to have happened last week. So expect some big names falling by Wednesday, it has been ordained! I only wish Tony Curtis had died, again…

Look Who You Could Have Had:

• Arnold Palmer, 87, American Hall of Fame professional golfer.
• Jean Shepard, 82, American honky tonk singer-songwriter (“A Dear John Letter“, “Slippin’ Away“), Parkinson’s disease.
• Herschell Gordon Lewis, 87, American film director (Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs!).
• Karam Chand, 110, British supercentenarian, co-holder of the world’s longest marriage.
• Shimon Peres, 93, Polish-born Israeli statesman, President (2007–2014), Prime Minister (1977, 1984–1986, 1995–1996), Nobel Laureate (1994), stroke.
• Ann Emery, 86, British actress (Rentaghost, Billy Elliot, Julia Jekyll and Harriet Hyde).

In Other News

SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced his plan on Tuesday to launch manned missions to Mars by 2022. One small problem: you might die. Musk admitted that the chances of dying on the first trip – which will have about 100 passengers, with tickets likely to be $500,000 – were “quite high”. And even if that first mission is a success, the risk of fatality will remain a definite possibility for those who sign on to the second mission, and the third, and the fourth…  “There’s no way around it… Are you prepared to die? If that’s okay, you’re a candidate for going,” said Musk. Are you willing to go on a trip that could cost you your life? Hell Yes!

Researchers from Spain have found that a tendency to bump off members of the same species is particularly common among primates, and have estimated that around 2% of human deaths at the origin of our species were down to such lethal spats. “What it is saying, in the broadest terms, is that humans have evolved strategies for solving problems with violence,” said Mark Pagel, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Reading, who was not involved in the research. Writing in the journal Nature, the team of researchers from four Spanish institutions sought to unpick the evolutionary contribution to lethal human violence by looking at how commonly a range of different mammals kill members of the same species. To do so, they examined the evolutionary family tree of mammals, looking at data from more than 1,020 species, as well as 600 human populations stretching as far back in time as the Stone Age, drawing on evidence from human remains found in archaeological excavations. The results revealed that for the ancestor of all mammals, around 1 in every 300 deaths was down to lethal violence between members of the same species. But, the authors note, for evolutionary ancestors of the primates and apes, the figures were higher.

If you take Benjamin Franklin at his word, death is coming. The good and the bad, the young and the old, the in-the-middle: as far as we know, none will live forever. The idea of an eventual death is something that was widely accepted as “true” long ago, but, like many things, it must be updated to suit the modern day. It’s time to accept that when death does come for us, it will be at the hand of our smartphone. And isn’t that comforting? It’s a fitting death: death by smartphone. What used to kill people? Horses, probably. Unlike what you might think, the way we will die by smartphone will not vary. At least not by much. Sure, there will be those who follow a smartphone game off of a cliff, or walk into traffic looking at a map, or lie down on the ground, close their eyes, and refuse to ever get up again because of Twitter. But the rest of us will die when our phones explode. Boom!

On This Day

• 1919 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffers a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed.
• 1925 – John Logie Baird performs the first test of a working television system.
• 1950 – Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz is first published.
• 1959 – The Twilight Zone premieres on CBS television.

Deaths

• 1985 – Rock Hudson, American actor (b. 1925)
• 1998 – Gene Autry, American actor, singer, and guitarist (b. 1907)
• 2006 – Tamara Dobson, American actress (b. 1947)

Last Week’s Birthdays

Mark Hamill (65), Michael Madsen (58), Heather Locklear (55), Will Smith (48), Catherine Zeta-Jones (47), Olivia Newton John (68), Linda Hamilton (60), Jim Caviezel (48), Serena Williams (35), Wilford Brimley (82), Meat Loaf (69), Gwyneth Paltrow (44), Avril Lavigne (32), Naomi Watts (48), Bam Margera (37), Hillary Duff (29), Dita von Tesse (44), Jerry Lee Lewis (81), Ian McShane (74), Johnny Mathis (81), Monica Bellucci (52), Julie Andrews (81),  Zack Galifanakis (47) and Jimmy Carter (92).

The Last Word

“Don’t die like I did.” – George Best, the Northern Irish professional footballer who played as a winger for Manchester United and the Northern Ireland national team.

• Best died as a result of a lung infection and multiple organ failure caused by years of alcoholism.

Next week peeps!