Great post, Bradford. Fusion Man is proof positive of the axiom that I have long retailed: if something can possibly be done, someone will do it. This guy is loco.

I just checked out this gentleman's videos on YouTube.  You get the impression that the jet wing could generate enough power for a surface level take-off; it's just that it would mean dragging the pilot's pedestrian ass along the runway at 80 mph.  Rollerblades maybe?  Water skis?

And, yes, he's compeltely nuts.  Reminds me of these BASE jumpers flying off cliffs in their bat suits.  Those assholes die all the time.  It always leads me to ask why LSD will earn you a Federal prison term (My friend's coworker did three years no parole for selling two tabs for $10 to a busboy at the restaurant where my firend waited tables) when jumping off cliffs will earn you an endorsement deal from Mountain Dew and a profile on Mtv.

Stories like this actually make me very proud to be a part of humanity.  People flirting with crossing the line between ingenuity and stupidity just to try to do something nobody else has done but everyone else wants to do.

Let's just hope Fusion Man doesn't tackle the flying car next.

"He can't land it, either, not without a parachute. And he has to wear fireproof pants."

Could someone make a pair of fireproof...PARACHUTE PANTS???

Aeromonas-

While you are correct in that the dude is a nutter (something that is not illegal), what in the world does that have to do with drug use? I am rarely disappointed in drug enthusiast's weak anecdotes for why drugs are harmless and pushers and users are basically innocent. Your, "friend's coworker"? Why not your sister's mother's employer's stylist? And he was selling to a busboy, which most likely meant that he sold to a minor. Cute.

BASE jumpers get arrested when they huck off of something that is illegal to jump off (say the Royal Gorge bridge, or skyscrapers). Yes, they can get a job in an advertisement, or as a stuntworker, which is not, incidentally, the same as an endorsement.

Drug dealers (i.e. your "friend's" coworker) sell a product that hurts people, employs violence somewhere in the chain from manufacture/growth to end user, and they do not pay taxes on their product.

I know that you probably can cite your Leary (A man who was brainblown when he killed himself), but have you read Kesey? He was America's original acid evangelist, but by the end of both his book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" and his life he had denounced LSD.

So, let's get this straight. BASE jumper's pay taxes on their gear, they pay tickets if they get a citation, and they pay for rescue and medical bills if a jump goes bad. Drug dealers evade taxes, sell a product that hurts people, target minors, and are part of an organized crime structure that employs violence. And BASE jumpers are the A**holes?