Weather Balloons

A persistent question I've wanted to ask ever since I read my mate Guiness's comment in an earlier post was a mention of a Darwin award to a bloke who wanted to reach out like the guy with waxy wings to see if the Sun was as small as that? Did it take just the one balloon ? I mean how much did he have to weigh plus the couch in order to fulfill his dream of floating up to the stratosphere? Without sounding strange'ist but what kind of a weird fucker would contemplate doing that let alone doing that!?

One more thing. Are we as "normal" people qualified to define stupidity as a point in our lives where we have all once (past experience) been stupid? Is our definition of stupidity a statement of how far we are on the society ladder? Surely stupidity works on an intellectual level. As does blind arrogance which in itself lends itself to stupidity. Infact are the extremities of stupidity suggesting the beginning of innocence? Think about an innocent five year old walking down a london high street and saying "Mummy, why is that man black?" Does that sound stupid or is that simply an innocent observation? Some people may have the mentality of a five year old. Does that make them innocent or simply retarded? And not in the traditional sense. Or perhaps the retrograde mentality of the antagontist implies that as a culture that the culture is retarded...