Sometime back there was a brief news report about a youth director of a local church who was fired because he had duct taped one of the unruly boys to the wall of the gym and left him there. The pictures you see are of kids and adults who consented to being duct taped to the wall not for punishment purposes but as fund raisers.

The Darwin awards came out this week and the winner was James Elliot. When his 38-calibre revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, the would-be robber did something you only see in the movies or in old Three Stooges skits. He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked. He received the award posthumously.

Now, your reaction to those two stories might very well be, "Get Real." But they ar…