Man flies over South Africa in a chair tied to helium balloons [video]

Post by mapmap » Sun, Oct 29, 2017, 4:53 AM UTC

jimmies wrote: post #7

Launching high-altitude helium balloons has been the activity some friends and I do for fun. Over the course of 2 years+ we've been doing this, we had over a dozen of successful launches where we could retrieve the payload. For kids, this is a great inspiration and educational opportunity, especially for those who are interested in technology and programming. We used Arduinos and Raspberry pis in many components of t…

Post by averagewall » Sun, Oct 29, 2017, 6:13 AM UTC

aaron695 wrote: post #5

andremat wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a Brazilian priest attempted a similar feat in 2008[1]. He won the 2008 Darwin Award for it [2]. [1] https://gizmodo.com/5022283/sad-ending-flying-priest-found-d... [2] http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2008-16.html

> Darwin Award Making fun of people dying. Fucking sick stuff. It's also logically crap. Often it's people (as in this case) doing things outside the normal. Things as hackers we should celebrate. It's also often people in extreme poverty just trying to make a living, aka the fucking sick part that we as rich educated people make fun of cause we don't have to do dirty things like recycle metal from unexploded ordnanc…

Post by markvdb » Sun, Oct 29, 2017, 7:20 AM UTC

Post by seszett » Sun, Oct 29, 2017, 8:17 AM UTC

knodi123 wrote: post #6

aaron695 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Darwin Award Making fun of people dying. Fucking sick stuff. It's also logically crap. Often it's people (as in this case) doing things outside the normal. Things as hackers we should celebrate. It's also often people in extreme poverty just trying to make a living, aka the fucking sick part that we as rich educated people make fun of cause we don't have to do dirty things like recycle metal from unexploded ordnanc…

Hey, tell me about it. There was a tragic accident at my school, when a structure collapsed and killed several students, because it had insufficient engineering oversight. But, eh, Darwin Awards had to make a joke, so they collectively gave it to all the victims, who were getting up at the crack of dawn to volunteer on a group project, and following all the safety rules they were given.

Post by gspetr » Sun, Oct 29, 2017, 8:56 AM UTC

averagewall wrote: post #13

aaron695 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Darwin Award Making fun of people dying. Fucking sick stuff. It's also logically crap. Often it's people (as in this case) doing things outside the normal. Things as hackers we should celebrate. It's also often people in extreme poverty just trying to make a living, aka the fucking sick part that we as rich educated people make fun of cause we don't have to do dirty things like recycle metal from unexploded ordnanc…

I agree we should respect people and no mock them for making mistakes that they pay the ultimate price for. It doesn't matter that they're doing it for fun instead of some desperate survival need. Early aviators gave us aeroplanes and balloons by taking foolish risks and many died, but we glorify a few survivors because of their important contributions. For some reason, many kinds of deaths are protected from mockery…