Geeks Trying To Be Funny » UP

Nat Geo builds House from UP…and it flies

christian — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 01:01:04 +0000

Yup; the National Geographic people build a replica of the House from the movie UP. It’s a only a 16 feet by 16 feet replica and it only used 300 weather balloons but it flew for an hour and reached 10,000 feet. It’s for the a new series called How Hard Can It Be? which premiers this fall.

Note, though the Mythbusters did an experiment on lifting a girl using ordinary helium balloons, the same kind that Mr. Fredrickson supposed to have used. Given that, the physics would have surely been different.

Original post via My Modern Met.

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Mr. Fredrickson’s Place

christian — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:24:39 +0000

If you don’t get this, you’ve been hiding under a rock all this time.

see more Epic Win FTW

The real story, however is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/us/28edith.html

Pixar fulfills a Dying Girl’s Wish

christian — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:33:11 +0000

There’s no doubting now that Pixar is in it to make people happy.

Ten-year old Colby Curtin had a very rare form of cancer and she knew she would soon die because of it. But ever since seeing the previews for Pixar’s UP, she fought to stay alive so she could see it. However, her condition prevents her from being taken to a cinema to enjoy the feature.

A family friend tried to call Pixar, wrangled the automated answering system and got through a human. After relaying Colby’s wish, Pixar flew an employee the next day, armed with a DVD of the film (note that there are no commercially available copies of the film yet), some toys and a poster.

They held a private screening of the film in the Curtins’ home. Colby couldn’t keep her eyes open because of pain (meds couldn’t help her) but she said she thoroughly enjoyed the film.

The employee left afterwards (albeit in tears; Colby’s mother said his eyes were welled up). He left Colby with an adventure resembling the scrapbook of the protagonist in the movie.

About seven hours later, Colby died in her parents’ arms.

Pixar refuses to comment on the matter or to reveal the employee’s name and others involved.

Link to article.