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Dusk at Monterey Bay, California.

Zz.

Do You Have To Protest Against Fossile Fuel In The Nude?

I guess doing it in the nude gets you media coverage that would otherwise have been another ho-hum event.

Cyclist in Portland this past week celebrated the, wait for it, World Naked Bike Ride event, by riding bikes, you guessed it, naked.

World Naked Bike Ride is a globally observed event among hard-core bikers designed, at least ostensibly, to promote the use of the bicycle for transportation. But Portland cyclists have been especially adamant about making it another of the Pacific Northwest city's quirky traditions.

"This is just a way of drawing attention to the need to be more green and replace fossil fuels with natural power," said Ken Johnson, who was completely nude and body-painted grey.
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The purpose of the naked rides, SHIFT says, is "a light-hearted protest against fossil fuel. ... A comment on the vulnerability of cyclists. Choose your message, ride with us! As bare as you dare."

So, other than to garner publicity, I don't see any direct reason why one would want to ride in the nude. Besides, do these people aware on how those bikes were made in the first place? You don't think fossil fuel was used in the manufacturing of those bikes, do you?

Come to think of it, maybe they are in the nude so that they don't wear nylons and spandex, etc., all synthetic fabrics that could have been made out of hydrocarbons. Hum... why not do a World Nude Walking event? Use of less material that could have been constructed using fossil fuel.

Zz.

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Somewhere high up in the Smokey Mountain range.

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High above Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. Flood water overflowing the Illinois river.

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It's The Little Things...

Sometime, it's the little things you do for someone, or your family, that gets you famous and appreciated. This dad started this as a prank to embarrass his son on his school bus. But it has now made him quite a celebrity.

And so began Dale’s hazing ritual that continued every day for the rest of his son's school year. The first day may have been the most shocking for Rain, but in the days to follow, the surprises kept coming.

Since the fall, Dale has waved at his son in 180 different outlandish costumes. The second day of school he wore a football helmet and jersey, and in the months that followed he opened the front door dressed as a blushing bride, a superhero, a Star Trek fan, Michael Jackson, and a giant chicken. One day he even lugged an old toilet bowl onto the street and sat on it reading a newspaper, stopping to wave as the bus rolled by.

It certainly help to have a sense of humor in such a situation.

Zz.

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A tranquil, quiet morning along the Chicago lakefront.

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Geographer Had Predicted Osama In Abbottabad

An amazing prediction by a UCLA Geographer and his students on the possible location of Osama Bin Laden as far back as in 2009.

...... predictions of UCLA geographer Thomas Gillespie, who, along with colleague John Agnew and a class of undergraduates, authored a 2009 paper predicting the terrorist’s whereabouts, were none too shabby. According to a probabilistic model they created, there was an 80.9% chance that bin Laden was hiding out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was killed last night. And they correctly predicted that he would be in a large town, not a cave.

And it's not as if they were using some classified information or techniques to make such a prediction.

“It’s not my thing to do this type of [terrorism] stuff,” he says. “But the same theories we use to study endangered birds can be used to do this.”

A lot of knowledge is interrelated like that. So one could study endangered birds, and the same mathematical formalism can be used in a military operation. Or one could study transport phenomenon in solids, and apply it to the financial markets. Not unheard of.

Zz.