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Peculiar Passage: Transportation Tidbits II

Sept. 17, 2013

The really great bit about transportation is that it moves people.

Obvious, yes?

Sometimes though, people aren’t moved in the most optimal ways. But who am I to judge?

Take a look:

During the Frankfurt Auto Show last week, Hadi Pourmohseni unleashed his emotions, in this case rage, on his BMW M6…using a sledgehammer.

After more than four years of owning the $160,000 car, Hadi told Bild he was “fed up” with the luxury car's laundry list of problems, including vibrations, rattling and shifting jolts when changing gears.

Sailing into a Balloon-Filled Sky

Jonathan Trappe on Thursday was just a man in a sailboat…attached to 370 helium-filled balloons.

In a trip reminiscent to that in the movie Up, the IT professional on Sept. 12 lifted off from Caribou, Maine, attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean by way of cluster balloons.

After 12 hours in the air, Trappe landed in Newfoundland, writing on Facebook: “This doesn’t look like France.”

Trappe’s other cluster balloon feats include crossing the English Channel in 2010 and the Alps in September 2011.

Keeping Up with the Joneses'…Cat

Five decades after the first feline traveled into space, Iran is entering the game.

Iran is considering sending a cat – a Persian – into space by March 21 to further its aerospace program, which aims to send a human into space by 2018, according to the state news agency IRNA.

The cat would join the ranks of the other Iranian astronauts, which include a mouse, a turtle, a monkey and some worms.

The move is a controversial one, not only politcally, but also in the animal rights spectrum.

“Iran’s archaic experiment, seemingly straight from the playbook of Wile E Coyote, is a throwback to the primitive techniques of the 1950s,” PETA said in a statement.

The animal rights organization said European and U.S. space programs stopped sending animals into space for ethical concerns and because they “turned out to be poor models for the human experience.”

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