Flying on the front page?

On the December 10th issue of the New York Times, a story can be found on the front page about man being able to fly. The title says "Humans, Flying Like Squirrels, Hoping to Land With No Chute" and the story discusses Jeb Corliss who shares a dream with people around the world : the dream of being able to fly. The article compares the pursuit like that of climbing Everest, as many nations are setting up their own "squirrel fliers". Jeb plans on wearing winged suit and hopes to land safely on a runway which he designed.
Crazy enough for you yet? Well Jeb has spent over 2 million dollars on his squirrel suit. This is beyond following your dream. This is putting your life in danger to do something that is virtually pointless. Man has always dreamed of flying but these dreams are in the hopes that we can actually lift ourselves off the ground and fly to seperate areas, not in the hopes that we are kicked out of a plane with a suit of wings on and pray that we land in one piece. What blows my mind is that this is obviously a very well educated man. Hell, he built a runway and a flying suit and has done a great deal of work on the aerodynamics of the obstacle he is about to pursue. Why do Americans waste great minds for senseless acts such as this one.
Lastly, why is the New York Times out of all the Newspapers out there, printing this on the FRONT PAGE. This is not front page material, no matter how much you try to compare it to the race to climb Mt. Everest. It is pure fluff. People question why American's seem to be dumber and the answer from my perspective is simple...we no longer read. Everything is spoon fed to us through television and movies. People who want hard hitting news these days read the NY Times for the most part, and when you want real information, do you really want Squirrel Man taking up a quarter of your front page?