Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for February 28, 2023

A kid could attach a cell phone, start live stream, and let the balloon go.

Waiver? More like if it goes over Montana, you can wave it goodbye.

Helium shouldn’t be wasted on kids toys.

He can find helium??

oh hahaha this is hilarious.. i especially like the little boy who appears to have tossed his balloon UP into the air but it winds up on the ground… the dejected little girl is also funny.

Or fill them with water. More fun.

So the SPY balloon, we ignore cause it’s funny? You really think China is our friend?

Did Pooh Bear have a balloon, or is that some other little bear?

Wiley kids – love ’em.

Can’t we somehow use the hot air generated by Congress to fill such balloons?

Use Hydrogen instead. And use some safety fuse for string.

Always remember who sold millions of U.S. jobs and thus most of our technology to the Chinese. Ronald Reagan opened the door and companies and corporations rushed to put their wealth into the Chinese basket; thus undermining the U.S. economy. When the next war comes, those companies and corporations will expect those they made unemployed to step up and die to protect their wealth; hopefully they will not and balance can be reestablished to some extent.

https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/balloon/Look at the pictures of the balloons. Reminds something?

Cute comic. But in reality, there should be a ban on this sort of toy. Releasing them at events does a lot of harm to the environment.

$400,000 a pop.

Helium is in short supply too.

You know thare is a shortage of Helium – and that it is used in MRI scanners.

I mean Helium is too precious to be used in balloons anyways. Think of the MRIs

We can always make more helium: just fuse a couple of hydrogen atoms together.

Heretofore, this has been a rather explosive process. Always, “within the next 10 years,” it may be waste material from power plants.

When I was young enough to have just learned that anything I let go of went down, my grandmother bought me a helium balloon at the fair. The next one got tied to my wrist, and I figured I still had something to learn about how things work. Still learning, over seven decades later.

Mylar balloons are an enviromental disaster

now, if the Chinese had created the balloon in the shape of a dragon, released it sometime during the Chinese New year celebration and claimed it had ‘escaped’ from a parade during high winds???

Well, fewer power outages from mylar balloons this way.

Geez, people seem to think that this is some new thing going on. Back in the 60’s when I was a kid, a buddy of mine and I built a hot air balloon with a couple of strips of balsa wood and a dry cleaning bag and a few tea light candles. For those too young to know this or who don’t own any good clothes, suits and dresses came back from the cleaners in large plastic bags.

Anyway, we made our hoot air ballon and since we were going to send it up in the daytime we had the bright idea to attach long strips of aluminum foil to the balsa wood frame at the bottom, since is would reflect the sunlight so we could keep site of it longer. We lit the candles, the bag filled with hot air and our experiment took flight and drifted away. That night on the 6 o clock news was a story about how the nearby SAC base scrambled two fighter jets when our ballon showed up on their radar.

We switched from hot air ballon experiments to model rocketry after that.

Fill those balloons with CO2 and that’s exactly what they’ll do. Argon, too…

Both the Chinese & Russians use hydrogen filled balloons, since they can generate the hydrogen at the launch site.

Can’t be located near D.C. Otherwise he’d have all the swamp gas he would need.

Balloons can be useful and fun without being filled with helium.

Really??

This is really going to screw up the Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Fiesta.

Baloons are just flying trash. They all have to come down someplace.

At first I thought that this was a joke about how we are running out of Helium and how it’s controlled by the Federal Government.

…or Florida. There I said it.

In 1960 a U.S. U-2 plane was shot down over Russian territory. The pilot Gary Powers having parachuted safely was captured and imprisoned for espionage. One example of U.S. activity….it’s not just the Chinese.

Just for giggles you could use nitrous oxide…

The big problem here is unnecessary helium use – it’s rare and becoming rarer

Uh.. helium supply is getting short, save it for medical equipment. Use hydrogen for party balloons…it’ll be a blast!

Those things are going over like lead balloons!

Spy “flights” of all kinds happening all the time…since no one has found any credible evidence at Area 51 via all that looking, do we really think some random balloon surveillance could spot the really good stuff? Nope…good stuff out of sight unless Feds want it seen.

I’m still waiting for anybody at all to explain to me why we should get all hot and bothered over a couple of balloons — which may or may not have been spying — when China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, India, probably Pakistan and maybe even Iran and North Korea have been observing us each and every day for the last several decades from their multiple spy satellites. Just like we’ve been doing to them. And all of them to each other. And who really gives a rip, anyway? The real fun and games are all going down behind closed doors and under roofs.

Low tech way to spread the next Covid

Whoever is still drawing cartoons about balloons obviously has theirs filled with nitrous oxide

The idiot speaks and I don’t mean Wiley.

About what we can expect from a bolshevik.

Wiley, those kids are so cute. Thank you.

I was really hoping that there was a Chinese guy in a lawn chair under the big Chinese balloon. With an air pistol, of course.