Oscars betting pools are generally a waste of time and money, on account of the Academy Awards being too predictable: Everyone places their bets on whoever the Entertainment Weekly said would win, and then three-quarters of the people in your pool are forced to split the prize.

Sigmund Freud theorized that humans have a death drive, a latent desire for self-destruction. In a media ecosystem rife with celebity death pictures, celebrity death bets, Celebrity Rehab, I'd say we have a culture-wide "death drive," too. The reaction to Whitney Houston's death two weeks ago, reported the day before the Grammys, underscored our obsession with such celebrity tragedies. What would be the Oscars' version of that particular fallout?