Taiwanese family eats deathcap mushrooms, one dies.

Okay, this is a classic case of sheer stupidity.

First of all, I want you, the reader, to understand that I am not trying to be mean, cruel or heartless, but I am using this as an example of how people think and act stupidly with terrible consequences.

A family that is visiting from Taiwan went mushroom hunting in the Oakland Hills and picked some mushrooms that looked a lot like the ones they have back home. Only problem was, it only LOOKED the same. It was the poisonous deathcap mushroom that they picked and one 70-year-old woman died while three other people are in serious condition from eating it.

Their mistake was that they ASSUMED it was the same mushroom from back home in Taiwan when it was nowhere near the same thing. How would they know if the same mushroom from Taiwan would be suitable to grow or survive in the soil and climate here in the San Francisco Bay Area? You see, many people make the assumption that they know what they are doing when they are not even experts in whatever it is they are doing. This is one particular case in point. And now, it cost some people their lives. This could have been avoided.

WHY must people make the assumption, "Oh, hey, it's the same thing! This will be fine!"

Well, as the old adage goes: Never ASSUME because it makes an ASS of U and ME.

They're not experts, they're not even in their own element and they should never have done what they did. I wonder, would they do the same thing if they found the mushroom in, say, Scotland?

The folly of human nature is that we always think we know everything. Well, I'm sorry, but nobody knows everything and there will always be somebody else out there who knows more than you or I do in a particular subject. So, word to the wise: Don't play an expert unless you can really back up that claim. It could cost you your life.

This time it did. DON'T make that same mistake!