Stupid People

First off: Being morbidly curious about Sylvia Plath's suicide, I did searches online trying to find out how long it would take to die if you stuck your head in a gas oven in 1963 Britain. 

Couldn't find out much about the time frame (20 minutes, 2 hours?), but did find out that coal gas, which the UK used up until the '70s, was very potent and a prime source of suicides. In the '70s, they switched to natural gas, and the suicide rate dropped. From a 1988 "Crime and Justice" journal article:

Between 1963 and 1975 the annual number of suicides in England and Wales showed a sudden, unexpected decline from 5,714 to 3,693 at a time when suicide continued to increase in most other European countries. This appears to be the result of the progressive removal of carbon monoxide from the public gas supply. Accounting for more than 40 percent of suicides in 1963, suicide by domestic gas was all but eliminated by 1975.

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During the above search, I came upon a couple of very odd, stupid things:
One was a widely distributed (but fake) "Plath suicide photo"---of a short, squat dead woman with very thick legs and a knee-length dress, wearing white gloves and white heels, with her head stuck in an oven. (Do a search for "Sylvia Plath suicide" and you'll find this.) In fact, Plath was tall and thin, with thin legs---and, according to every account, she was wearing her nightgown (and no gloves or heels) when she killed herself.

What I also found online: Many young people on various chat sites refused to believe that Plath killed herself by sticking her head in an oven because: "I know for a fact that it would get too hot and no one could stand having their head in there for that long."

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As another Stupid aside: At my apartment complex, many people set things out by the dumpsters, or on top of a couple of cement posts next to the dumpsters, when they want to get rid of them. I, for instance, have put an old table out there, as well as a pair of old red rubber boots. On Saturday, I found a bunch of green onions on top of a post, with one stalk bitten off. Was someone actually supposed to excitedly grab this and go home and make a salad?