This Week in the Mercury
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Science! Humanity: Doing Stuff for the Hell of It, Since Forever
Posted by Kevin "the Intern" Otzenberger on Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 2:12 PM
Yves Rossy became the first man to fly with a jet-powered custom wing suit in 2006, and flew one over the English Channel two years later. On Friday, he became the first man to perform aerobatic stunts with his jet pack, completing two full loops after launching from a hot air balloon in Switzerland.
This kind of stuff proves that mankind does not progress out of necessity, but out of boredom. Science also supports that hypothesis, with new archaeological evidence to suggest the first sedentary human civilizations formed because of the time-consuming demand of harvesting cereal grains for beer. That's right; the first villages were probably founded around neolithic dive bars.
So there it is. Beer inspired farming. Pot inspired Funyuns. Self-absorption inspired Facebook. And wealthy Swiss adrenaline junkies finally built a real jet pack. Sometimes you gotta do things just to do them.
...Like this guy does.
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