Racist Reg ignores Nigerian helicopter pioneer

'You disgust me!!!!!!'

By Lester Haines • Get more from this author

Posted in Bootnotes, 26th October 2007 10:55 GMT

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FoTW In case you missed it, Nobel prize winner James Watson recently got himself into a bit of trouble after claiming that black people are less intelligent than white people.

This provoked a bit of a rumpus, and Watson was subsequently suspended by his research lab for his trouble. All pretty straightforward, you might think, but in our zeal to cover the controversy, we evidently overlooked another story of international import. An angry reader wrote:

Some racist white scientist calla africans genetically intellectually inferior and you give him three coverages.

Then an african nigerian guy builds home made helicopters from scratch and the story becomes the top sought after story on slashdot, yahoo, etc and you guys give him a total black out!

The racism is very clear here! especially if you consider the zeal with which you go after the 419 scammers!

you disgust me!!!!!!

Well, it's true: 24-year-old physics undergraduate Mubarak Muhammad Abdullahi has indeed knocked up a chopper from a Honda Civic engine, seats from a Toyota and bits from a crashed 747.

Although his creation has yet to fly higher than seven feet above the ground, the budding Sikorsky is planning a new machine which will be "a radical improvement on the first one in terms of sophistication and aesthetics".

And good luck to him, we say. ®

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