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Man flies 193 miles in lawn chair 16:10 10th July, 2007 Rejected

Man flies 193 miles in lawn chair

GillBates0 writes "CNN is reporting that Kent Couch managed to fly 193 miles in a lawn chair fitted with 105 helium balloons. The flight lasted approximately 9 hours, after which he touched down safely in a farm. As he made about 25 miles an hour, a three-car caravan filled with friends, family and the dog followed him from below. In 1982, Larry Walters tried a similar feat in Los Angeles and surprised an airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed a guy in a lawn chair. His wife was quoted as saying "I know he'd be thinking about it more and more, it would always be on his mind. This way, at least he's fulfilled his dream.""

Your post advocates a conspiracy theory which is

( ) paranoid
( ) delusional
(x) impossible to confirm
(x) impossible to refute

Specifically, your theory fails to account for

( ) Stupidity of the general population
( ) Stupidity of the politicians
(x) Lack of supporting evidence
(x) Plenty of contradictory evidence
(x) Lack of a centrally controlling authority for conspiracies
(x) The facts can be explained without need for real conspiracy
(x) Scientists generally don't participate in conspiracies
(x) Failure to mention the Illuminati

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been proven
(x) That's what they WANT us to think

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, you're batshit crazy
(x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

This was a story I tried to submit but was rejected by Slashdot's editorial staff. Not grousing, saving my composition here for posterity, as I do with other of my rejected stories.

The BBC is reporting that a recent court challenge to India's patent laws by pharmaceutical giant Novartis may cut the supply of affordable medicines to treat AIDS and other epidemics in the developing world. Based on the rejection of it's patent on a drug, Novartis is arguing that India's requirement for drugs to be "new and innovative" is not in line with the WTO TRIPS (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement that India is party to. India came to be called the "pharmacy of the world's poor" since it stopped issuing patents for medicines in 1970 allowing its many drug producers to create generic copies of medicines still patent-protected in other countries - at a fraction of the price charged by Western drug firms. In 2005, however, it changed it's patent laws to comply with international regulations. NGOs including Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and Oxfam say that if Novartis succeeds, pharmaceutical firms will be able to put newer AIDS treatments based on existing drugs under patent protection in India, preventing cheap generic versions being exported to Africa and elsewhere. In 2005, Slashdot carried a story about efforts to put India's ancient traditional medicine and Yoga online, so as to make it visible as public domain to patent examiners. More recently, Slashdot carried a similar story about Tiwan's decision to violate Roche's patent on a bird flu drug for the benefit of it's people.

Rejected: 13:35 21st November, 2006

The Telegraph and several other news outlets are reporting on the international deal to build the world's most advanced nuclear fusion reactor that was signed in today. Representatives of the EU, the US, Japan, India, Russia, South Korea and China signed the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) agreement in Paris, finalising the project which aims to develop nuclear fusion as a viable energy source to fossil fuels. According to the ITER consortium, fusion power offers the potential of "environmentally benign, widely applicable and essentially inexhaustible" electricity, properties that they believe will be needed as world energy demands increase while simultaneously greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced,justifying the expensive research project.

life, n: The whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.