The up votes on this kinda leave me flabberghast. The idea behind wifi hotspot balloons is quite old now, and have already been put into practice. How is this any different? What hardware are they using? NONE of this is covered, it is simply a PR video and completely pointless to anyone who actually cares about it.

I'd eat you and your baby in a heart beat if it meant survival for me. But the fact is almost nobody on this planet is currently in that situation, probably never will, and the more people that become vegan, the less likely that is to happen as well.

So yes, people that have made a conscious decision to not do cruel things while they are unnecessary are superior. Just like in the way you don't go around murdering people for shoes right now, even though in the apocalypse you would, makes you a superior person compared with some thug that does that now. You would probably steal food from people that need it, but you aren't doing that now, so you're definitely superior to people that do steal unnecessarily now too. But you don't see anyone telling people who don't steal to get off their high horses.....

There is no humor because the situation is so serious, not because it's puncturing a balloon of superiority. Or do you think that people who opposed concentration camps where simply doing so to feel superior too?
The other thing that makes it totally not funny is because I've heard this ignorant and false stereotype stuff so many times it makes my eyes roll. Vegans are as a diverse group of people as can possibly be, with the only thing in common is their compassion for animals, and care of the environment.

I'm also not a lion or a chimp, I don't copy their other behaviors like throwing poo or licking my own ass, so I don't see why I'd copy their carnivorous behavior either. It's a good thing I have a frontal lobe and can use reason to make decisions based on my understanding of the consequences.

Also while I would eat meat for survival, I would not be eating it for the taste. It sounds to me like you're under the impression that vegans are like ex-heroin addicts, always being tempted by that next hit. It's not like that all, taste buds adjust dramatically over time, in fact they adjust second to second - eat an apple after a swig of soft drink. It'll taste sour. Yet do it before, and the apple is sweet. I honestly find the thought of meat revolting now, just like you would if you had to eat something like a dog or rat. I feel the same way about milk the way you do about drinking human breast milk. I'm not just saying this to be dramatic or superior, I'm saying it to give you an example how easily your taste buds are influenced.

@ahimsa, @transmorpher

You might as well cry out against nature, because if you think humans are barbarous and cruel, nature owns us. Watch a video of a pack of lions eating a wildebeest alive sometime. I don't think they anesthetize it, pretty sure the animal thinks being eaten alive is torture, and I think it qualifies as murderous. This goes on daily, right this minute in fact, and the reason it happens is because there is a portion of the lion's instinct that is designed to like meat.

Chimpanzees will eat meat, sometimes going out of their way to find it and pull it apart alive. They don't need to biologically, but they are coded to.

Vegans avoid meat because humans have managed to reach a point of civilized society which allows us to have lofty moral opinions. I guarantee you however, that if society broke down and you couldn't get your hands on processed food with that special hint of paprika, you would have your hands out for a venison steak or pork hindquarters.

Therein lies the hypocrisy that annoys most of the non-vegans, you guys DO have this faint whiff of "I am superior to you because I don't participate in murder" when the fact is that you would eat meat if you had to. You don't see humor in being lightly made fun of, because it punctures your balloon of superiority.

In any case, the point of this entire thing is that if you choose to be vegan, awesome! Laugh a little if people poke fun at you and don't always try to sound like a stuck up ass if they don't agree with your choices. I think you'll find that more people will quit harboring dislike of you. Quit treating your personal dietary choice as a religion and don't try to convert people to it. If they see you living your life as a vegan and ask about it, then you explain it to them. Don't huff and puff while people eat meat around you and act like it is your job to convert them to the 'true way'. Life will be a lot simpler for you!

That is sort of right. Basically it is a law of physics, Boyle's law. The larger balloon has a lot more space for the air particles in it to move around, meaning less pressure (to a point). The small balloon has very little space, creating a condition of higher pressure, causing the air particles to seek a larger space to move into.

I think it's a function of the pressure of the air already in the balloon relative to the pressure required to add air to the balloon. When you blow up a balloon the first few puffs require a lot of pressure to inflate and then it becomes easier until it approaches maximum size.

I think it is to do with stretching too, but I don't think he pre-stretched it I just think the more inflated balloon was stretched by inflation.

The test would be to fully inflate two balloons, half deflate one, and then connect them.

He probably stretched the left balloon before filling it, making the pressure inside less than the right, which he didn’t pre-stretch.

We have high school students sending cameras into space. Testing the air at 30k would cost < $500/balloon. If all of the chemtrail theorists put in $100, they could EASILY afford to acquire the 'proof' they needed.
1) Decide what chemicals you want to test for
2) Select a way to test for those chemicals in the air. (active vs passive?)
3) When "Chemtrail" spotted, send up 50+ Weather Balloons in vicinity w/ chemical tester across range... 1 per half mile = 25 mile spread. (it takes 30 mins to climb to 30k feet)
4) Retrieve devices.
5) If no chemicals were found, either:
A) Dispersal of the chemical via chemtrail is terribly inefficient, absolutely no reason to worry
B) No chemicals were found

OR... and here is the brilliant part. Monitor chemicals on the ground. If they are in high enough concentration to have an effect on the human body, they'll be high enough to detect on the ground.

Testing that contrails are nothing but H20 would require a high-altitude drone or just charter a flight. It isn't that difficult to test, but the chemtrails theorists wouldn't trust a non-chemtrails theorist (otherwise they'd be over it for now).

The extreme case I thought of here wasn't about the balloon, it was about the air. Imagine the air was a lot denser... like water, or jelly.

I wasn't familiar with the term 'extreme cases' but use this all the time when making logical arguments, and think of it as exaggeration to help illustrate a point.

Unfortunately, while I think it makes it easier for me to visualize the point, people are often blinded by the comical nature of the exaggeration

"What do you mean if there were 10 zillion Chinese people on the island of Malta and 3 Brits had the Americas to themselves? The world should still learn English!"

(Someone trying to argue that even if Chinese was predominant, English would still be used in a larger geographical area, and me attempting to use exaggeration to illustrate that it's besides the point).

Problem 1: Tip toward the wood, as the wood will lose more buoyancy from the air than the lead.

As for the extreme case here, let's use the helium balloon. You tie the helium balloon to the right hand side of the scale. Now, to get the bar on the scale horizontal (balanced) you need to hang the lead weight closer to the fulcrum but on the right hand side of the scale too.

Now remove the air.

The balloon was only pulling up because of the air. Without the air it will hang down. So, we now have two things hanging down on the same side of the scale, so it's very obvious which way the scale will swing...

Problem 2: pi*20m Circumference = pi*diameter. Poles increase diameter by 20m. Really not sure where the 'extreme case' comes into this though?

Beats the hell out of me.

Just to noodle around a bit, the only extreme I can think of about the scales would be to substitute an extremely low density object for the wood. Say, a helium filled balloon? But that assumes that she did in fact mean equal mass for the two objects, and wouldn't actually give valid readings on a scale in atmosphere anyway.

Extreme cases are a rather specialized approach, as I remember...its not really a common, or easy way to get answers. I got the feeling this was kind of a "wannabee" presentation. Like she wanted to do "Smarter every day" stuff but isn't quite able to find and explain interesting non-intuitive problems well.

In fact not only do you have the balloon, you now have hundreds of plastic BBs littering the the streets. Well done guys.

Epic fail.

Not that I think shooting into the air for minor reasons is a *good* idea, but the chances of it being dangerous to the point of killing (or even injuring) someone are really really low. See for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire

First of all, even in a densely populated city, the ratio of square meters of human-occupied space to unoccupied space is really low. So, you gotta be quite unlucky to have a bullet fired up land on a human instead of house / dirt / concrete / whatever.

Second, when the bullet comes down it won't be traveling at its muzzle velocity, but at its terminal falling velocity. Mythbusters did a test on that, as have various other sources, and most find that a bullet falling at terminal velocity isn't fast enough to kill unless you're outstandingly unlucky. Deaths have been recorded, but at a lower rate than, say, Hippos, pulling a Carradine, or having an icicle fall on your head.


I guess it is sorta like hailstones, which could potentially have relatively comparable mass, aerodynamic properties, and terminal velocities as bullets in some cases. I've been caught in a hailstorm before, and while it was enough to sting and be rather painful, it wasn't near strong enough to break the skin.


So, given all of that, IF it came down to a situation where a policeman has to show a dangerous assailant that they mean business and are willing to fire their weapon to resolve it, firing straight up into the air might potentially be a good way to accomplish that without immediately shooting to kill / injure the assailant. In some scenarios, possibly. NOT that a stopped car trying to dump drugs (via balloon or whatever else) is an example of such a scenario.

It is fake and no balloons were harmed, it was actually pretty plausible in my mind up until that point.

Good plan, should have used clear balloons.