Hacker News Reader

Comment by KMnO4 | Hacker News Reader

I worked for a local farmer in high school. One of the novelties he grew in small quantities were “square” watermelons[0]. When grown in a square fibreglass enclosure, the melons would conform to the cube shape.

I wonder if a pumpkin could be grown in a kayak-shaped mold to improve the maneuverability of the pumpkin boat.

[0]: https://www.whataboutwatermelon.com/index.php/2018/05/cube-w...

View on HN

Yes, this should be done. It needs to be done. I neither have a pumpkin farm, or a kayak mold making company, but I support those that do in this endeavor. God speed brave pumpkin kayaker.

You don't need a pumpkin farm, just an ordinarily sized garden and $6 worth of seeds:

https://parkseed.com/dills-atlantic-giant-pumpkin-seeds/p/05...

A plastic kayak would probably not survive the mold-making process, but that's fine, you can get a kayak either used (abused) from a local livery for dirt cheap depending on your bartering/scrounging skills, or a low-quality new one can be had for under $200 at a big box store, and simply be cut off the pumpkin.

I wonder if it would disqualify you to coat the pumpkin in a thick layer of Line-X:

I live right next to dills farm! There's recently been a controversy where protester have been trying to change how the water in a local lake is managed, and the lake have been completely shut down (as in it is now a dust bowl unless it's rained recently), so we can no longer have our yearly giant pumpkin boat races.

What's the feeling in the community when pumpkin boat season comes along? Sounds like a bunch of fun

Remember the square bonzai kitten thing. https://www.wired.com/2001/02/fbi-goes-after-bonsaikitten-co...

Oh god, I remember this. My mom sent it to her sister who was outraged — frothing at the mouth, practically — that someone could do something so cruel. It was hard to convince her that it was a fake, and then of course she said that such things should be banned.

I also know that she enjoys veal, so as usual, human hypocrisy WRT animal exploitation knows no bounds.

> I also know that she enjoys veal, so as usual, human hypocrisy WRT animal exploitation knows no bounds.

That seems like quite the false equivalence.

maybe closer to fois gras?

"Foie gras production should be judged not by the worst farms, but by the best"

https://www.seriouseats.com/the-physiology-of-foie-why-foie-...

That article does a great job of further explaining why the practice is cruel, by also showing how the ducks are left in an albeit not as typically cramped, but nonetheless dank, large shed.

The quote seems to make people think it could be ethical, because the prior treatment is slightly better than average?

I dunno — torturing a sentient being to to death for your own amusement is fucked up no matter how you slice it. A calf is about as smart as a cat, has an emotional life, and cares about its family. Eating meat is not necessary for survival; we do it for convenience or entertainment.

The primary difference between a cat and calf in Western culture is that we view one as a pet, and the other as protein on legs. If you subjected a dog to what a veal calf goes through you’d be hauled into a police station.

I don’t know why I decided to inject myself into a vegan argument

One of my favorite (!?) FBI anecdotes is that one of the cartoonists who was syndicated in the original print version of The Onion, managed to have one of his characters make a joke about bombing the WTC get published the same week a bomb went off in the parking garage. Dumbest luck. He got to have a nice chat with some men in black about that one.

I totally understand why they would need to dot some i's and cross some t's on that one but the bonsai kitten thing is just inane.

A different approach: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fungus-answer-climate-c...

This is a great idea, I had a similar thought thinking about how woody gourds are and wondering if you grew a giant one, if you could somehow shape it more like a boat, dry it out and seal it and be on the water.

You know there are are other materials that one can shape to be boat-like? In fact, it's the way we've been making boats for a long time....

Hacker News

Why do they have model rocket launch height competitions? We already have real rockets that go to space.

Almost all competitions have different restrictions/categories to participate in (swimming has backstroke, butterfly, freestyle, etc, etc)

Different categories of a competition challenge different things. There are very different engineering challenges related to building a boat out of a pumpkin. It doesn't make a better boat than standard metal/wooden boats, but it does cause people to think about boat building in a different way. It might just be a fun personal challenge, or it might be a fun way to think up classic boat solutions by looking at things from a completely new lens.

Worst case this wastes someone time and money (which a lot of standard engineering does too), best case someone has fun and/or learns something.

Kayaks are long and skinny. The shells of giant pumpkins are think. I think you'd have trouble getting enough flotation. You need something with a better surface area to volume ration, a boat more like a hemisphere. I'm thinking a coracle mold. But then, that's basically what a giant pumpkin is already.

I think this is the guy you want to help you make your racing pumpkin:

You might also be interested in cardboard boat regattas.

That will certainly be how this arms race progresses.

Records are meant to be broken.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com