Caught In The Net: Flying without wings

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary is probably on the phone to Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi as I write this. The 24-year old Nigerian physics student has cobbled together a barely-functioning homemade helicopter from sheet metal, car seats and debris from a crashed Boeing 747 airliner. Abdullahi does admit that his first helicopter lacks “some basic facilities like devices for measuring atmospheric pressure, altitude, humidity and the like,” and it has only ever lifted a few feet off the ground.
He lives in the (possibly vain) hope that the Nigerian government will stop placing orders with western manufacturers and turn to him, but so far the official response to his chopper project has been underwhelming to say the least. Although some government officials got very excited when they saw him conduct a demonstration flight in neighbouring Katsina state, Nigeria’s Civil Aviation Authority has so far shown no interest in his aircraft. “No one has come to see what I’ve done. We don’t reward talent in this country,” laments Abduhalli.
Read more at: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hV0rzEDq7TWnlm7tMmr2zeQmiRig
Any L-drivers out there would do well to check out www.theregister.com/2007/10/26/pol_pots_merc
While the government may be clamping down on provisional license holders right now, do you really think the Gardai would have the balls to stop a 1973 Mercedes stretch limo that was once owned by Cambodian dictator Pol Pot?
It’s for sale on eBay now – one genocidal owner, full and bloody service history. And continuing with the stretch limo theme, check out the extra-long VW hippie van at http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2007/10/vw-microbus-limousine.html – puts all those stretch Hummers to shame!
If you don’t want to know just how close we’ve come to nuclear obliteration at various points over the years, then for heaven’s sake don’t read www.damninteresting.com/?p=913, a fascinating piece that chronicles the screw-ups, false alarms and computer glitches that very nearly led to the release of the superpower’s nuclear arsenals on more than one occasion.
Fans of unnervingly creepy animation should plug ‘Salad Fingers’ into their YouTube search boxes for a series of vignettes telling the story of a disturbing long-fingered green fellow with a carnal penchant for rusty objects, particularly spoons. Trust me, it’s about 300 times stranger than it sounds.
Meanwhile, police in Hampshire, England are wishing they’d thought a little harder when designing their back-of-a-bus recruitment poster, especially in relation to the position of the, ahem, exhaust pipe:
www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/22/hampshire_police_ad
Before we go, there’s just time for http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4FnEdBwEnak (stunning South American goal from the half-way line) and www.rte.ie/news/2007/1026/germany.html (teenager in Germany outruns cops in a go-kart).