I’m normaly not a big fan of TV. Last night suprised me though, the Discovery Channel had back to back episodes of Mythbusters followed by Top Gear. If you haven’t seen these shows you should, and you will see why they’re so FREAKING COOL!
Mythbusters is a show that does exactly what the title emplies. These two guys that normaly do special effects for TV/movies take on myths and tall tales to see if such a thing is realy possible. Last night they took on the myth that if your in an elevator and it happens to FALL you might have a chance of living if you jump just before you hit the ground. So they got an old elevator working and rigged a test dummy named Buster to jump 6 feet before the elevator hits the bottom of the shaft. And they dropped the elevator! Boom! Buster’s toast.
My favorit episode so far has to be them proving there is no way to beat the breathalizer test(mints, drinking mouthwash ect, one of them ate a raw onion!). I also liked the one where they tested what house hold appliances are most likely to kill you if you bring them to your bath with you. Plugged in, of course. They tried it with plan water, then with a small amount of urine since that’s what would conduct. Then with bath salts… teehee… poor buster. And they hooked up flash powder to a fuse thing so if it was leathal it did a nice little pyrotechnic. Oh, and how can I forget when they proved that there’s no way you can “Blow someone away” with any kind of hand gun. Like in the movies, someone gets shot with a pistol and goes flying back… they hung a dead pig and shot at it with various hand guns, shotguns, machine guns… at one point they were ALL shooting at the poor pig carcas with weapons of their choice. Then in true mythbusters style they blew it up some how…
Top Gear is a nifty car show. It’s british, witch makes it infinately cooler. Last night they had a race… one guy had a Ferrari of some sort. Two guys had to use public transportation and an airplane. They were racing form their studio in London to see who would get to the Alps first! The Ferrari takes of in the middle of the night, by morning it’s off the farry in the main land. The other two guys were still waiting for their plane. Well once they were on the plane they bypassed the Ferrari and landed in Spain. But they had to take a train and two buses to get where they were going. In the end the Ferrari won by less than 10 minutes! Who would have thought!?
Last episode they bought an old POS toyota truck… ’80s I think. Not in great visual condition, but it rans just fine. They drive it down stairs. Scrape it agains walls a bit. Then they take it out to the beach, tie it down and wait for the tide to come in. Well, the truck gets bucked off the lines and they have to wait five hours before they find it on its side half eaten by sand. They tip it up right and have a mechanice tinker with it for about 45 minutes. NO SPARE PARTS. They start the truck, ROFL! and drive to the next location. I big old field in the middle of nowhere. They get it going 65 and drive it through an old shack. Then they get a crane and drop a camper trailer on it. Then get a wrecking ball and smash the crap out of it. Then… then… they set it on FIRE! It still ran… :O!! Then last night… hehe, rofl! NO way! They put the truck on the top of a 30 something story sky scraper that was being demolitioned. Down the truck goes with the rest of the building. Still no spare parts, the mechanic tinkers… after a while you hear the starter really trying hard. Then the engine RUNS! And the gear box still works! It drives!!! ROFL!
Geek of all trades (GOAT) 