So a Midlands Radio Station has been fined for it's Competition.

[sft42]

It asked people to sit on a block of ice and the person who managed to stay seated the longest won tickets to a sold out pop concert.....four people managed to stay on the ice long enough to gain permanent scars....So my question is...Just how stupid can people be? Tee Hee! Examples please.

[andy hughes]

The contestants were not as stupid as you might imagine - they were sitting on 'dry ice' - solid carbon dioxide, which is so cold, it freezes the nerves in the skin, and although your body heat rushes out through your skin to compensate for the cold at such a speed it burns your skin, you don't feel it with the numbed nerves until the damage is done. To answer your question - look at any of the Japanese game show 'Endurance' incidents, usually involving severe pain and / or revulsion, in the name of 'entertainment', and stupidity in partaking, and slightly more stupidity in providing an audience for it.

[bimsey]

People never ceases to amaze me with thier stupidity they deserve all they get for sitting on the ice in the first place .

[sft42]

Andy that's the point i'm making exactly!! I'm very well aquainted with dry ice it's solid state being achieved at -78 degrees or less...so i wouldn't put my arse anywhere near it...even the dumest shmuck must know the difference between wet ice (h2o) and dry ice (co2)? Ho Hum!

[j2buttonsw]

The good old http://www.darwinawards.com/ is a fair indication of our stupidity. I am surprised at the contestants and with Andy's answer as I used to work with Cardice and my hands used to sting like mad (or something) if I ever held the stuff for too long!

[andy hughes]

I must be a 'dumb schmuck' then - I certainly wouldn't know the difference between 'wet' and 'dry' ice - and apparently I'm not alone - the organisers of the competition mustn't have known either, or they wouldn't have organised it in the first place. Knowledge of chemistry is not a definition of intelligence, any more than ignorance of the more obscure compounds renders anyone particulalry stupid - we all know what we know, and some poor people, to their cost, didn't know quite enough.

[Cactus]

I read on Teletext's news section yesterday, about several coachloads of people that are leaving this country in protest of the impending war with Iraq - and heading for Baghdad to act as human shields. There's believing in a cause, and then there's going and standing in the direct path of lots of cruise missiles. One of those is stupid, i'll leave you to decide which.