impressive » Absurd Intellectual

Hot air ballooning — to the extreme

Modern Life Comments Off

Jun 132011

And by extreme, I obviously mean “suspended from the balloon, 10,000 feet off the ground, with hooks embedded in the skin of your back.”

And if you like this 30 second clip (no sound, apparently?) you’ll be thrilled to learn that it’s just part of a documentary called Feet Off The Ground that is being filmed.

News station KATU has the story:

34-year-old Zane Whitmore of Seattle (he used to live in Portland). He was pierced four times across his shoulder blades and the balloon was released over California’s Long Valley Caldera. The flight, which was on Saturday, lasted about 75 minutes.

“I felt like I was flying,” Whitmore said in the press release. “It was amazing to have a perspective on a landscape that no one has had before. As I drifted down low I was struck by the movement I saw on the ground, by how much life exists in the desert. It was actually a very peaceful experience.”

(here, via Boing Boing)

Straight As will never be good enough again

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 13 July 2010 Modern Life

Jul 132010

Brianna Smrke looks like she’s lacking a vowel in her last name. She may want to consider an A. After all, she has a lot of them.

The Toronto Star reports that the Toronto high school student got top marks in her senior year of high school. And I’m talking about TOP marks.

Instead of taking the normal six courses, she took eight. And instead or taking regular courses, she took the presitgious and more-difficult International Baccalaureate program.

And she go 100% in all of her courses.

Wow.

Sincere, awed applause.

And the article goes to great pains to also showcase how she’s not a workaholic school nerd, but has an active social life. Articles of this type always do.

Here in Brandon, the local version of the International Baccalaureate has been criticized as an expensive, under-used program for an elite few. My take is that elites need special programming, too. No one criticizes expensive, under-used programs for a few people in wheelchairs, for example. Because everyone recognizes that providing opportunities to reach your potential is the right thing to do. But too often, that reasoning is only applied to helping people reach the average.

Because if Brianna Smrke got 100% in eight courses, my guess is she probably could have been challenged a little more, scholastically.

This video will make you feel like an inadequate card shuffler

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 2 February 2010 Modern Life

Feb 022010

I consider myself a pretty okay card shuffler — I can do a nice riffle and cascade, but those are pretty standard. I can also do a pretty clean one-handed cut, and if I gave myself some practice time, I could probably do it both right- and left-handed, and I used to be able to do them simultaneously.

I joked recently that card shuffling and the one-handed cut was the only practical thing I recalled learning in high school.

But now I feel inadequate:

Yes, it’s kind of an ad for clothing, and also for the magic instruction of Dan and Dave, but it’s also a pretty spectacular display of dexterity. Wow.

Bomb-proof wallpaper. Um, go science?

Posted by Grant Hamilton on 19 November 2009 Modern Life

Nov 192009

If nothing else, the idea of bomb-proof wallpaper is a great excuse to smash wrecking balls into brick and film it for the Internet’s enjoyment.

However, the darn thing seems to work! Of course, I’m a little skeptical — if that’s a load-bearing wall, then wouldn’t the weight of the floors above collapse the building no matter what flexible wonder-wall is keeping the bricks together?

The designers say:

covering an entire room takes less than an hour. The wallpaper is so effective that a single layer can keep a wrecking ball from smashing through a brick wall, and a double layer can stop blunt objects (i.e. a flying 2×4) from knocking down drywall.

See more here.

Impressive trick shot

Posted by Amy Breen on 16 October 2009 Everything Else

Oct 162009

The constant replays on this video are slightly grating, but it’s an impressive shot nonetheless. The best part is the goalies utter confusion at how it happened.

Oh, and the kid is 9.