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What does the fox say?

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Did you know that a fox’s tail is called a “brush”?

There are 12 species of fox, but 37 different dogish animals are called fox. But somewhere along the line we figured out what true fox is, and there are only 12 of them. These are member of the genus “Vulpes.” Vulpes is Latin for … wait for it … fox. Something that is fox-like is “vulpine.”

What does the fox say? They bark (sort of), scream, and sometimes they howl.

Here’s a red fox screaming. May not be work safe, depending on where you work:

In the case of the television network, FOX, the fox says “bla bla bla” and no one quite knows why. Or what it means.

A Russian scientist named Belyaev ran a series of experiments that included breeding foxes that had somewhat tame behavior (i.e., the pups tended to bite less) and in so doing invented a dog. It wasn’t really a dog, but it was dog like in some interesting ways, and it barked more.

In popular culture, of course, the fox does this:


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How much global warming is there in terms of atomic bombs? The Hiroshima Widget.

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h3>One Hiroshima, Two Hiroshimas, Three Hirosimas, Four

On August 6th, 1945, the United States military detonated what was to date the largest and most terrible bomb ever created by humanity in the city of Hiroshima Japan. Since that time, the word “Hiroshima” has come to mean awesome power. In fact, the energy released by this bomb is beyond comprehension by the average person. Aside from the unbelievable power associated with that one human made machine, we also think, when we think of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, of horrible consequences arising from human activity. It does not matter what one thinks today of whether or not that bomb should have been dropped or how the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki influenced the end of World War II in the Pacific; the war was a horrible thing, and in both Germany and Japan and their captured territories the loss of human life and destruction of property needed to end the fascist regimes that controlled those countries was beyond measure.

For these reasons it seems appropriate to describe what humans are now doing with many of their other machines to the planet and by extension to themselves with the virtually unchecked alteration of the chemistry of the Earth’s atmosphere in terms of Hiroshimas. And when we do this, the result is astounding. The addition of extra greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels causes the atmosphere to retain more heat than it otherwise would. This has enormous consequences. A huge amount of the world’s water is normally trapped in glaciers, and these glaciers are melting. The ocean absorbs about 90% of this extra heat, which causes it to expand in size. Between the melting of the glaciers into the sea and the expansion of size from heat, unchecked emission of greenhouse gas will eventually cause sea level rise to the extent that most of the world’s large settlements will be inundated, and huge expanses of cropland that supply our food will be ruined. Accelerated melting of the Arctic has caused a change in weather patterns that causes “stalling” and “blocking” events to occur many times a year instead of now and then. These events cause huge floods in some areas and “flash droughts” in other areas. The additional energy added by this accidental and catastrophic transformation of our planet to the atmosphere and the sea has caused an increase in the frequency of major storms and has increased the strength of these storms on average, and in addition, tropical storms of a given magnitude have more severe effects because of sea level rise. And more problems beyond this have happened and will happen in the future.

So, how do we describe this awesome (and I use the term “awesome” with its more traditional definition, not as a good thing) increase in energy in terms of “Hiroshimas” … how many atomic bombs per unit time is equivalent to the increase in additional, unwanted energy in our atmosphere?

  • One a year?
  • Ten a year?
  • Two a month?
  • One a day?
  • Ten a day?
  • One an hour?
  • Ten an hour?
  • One a second?

No. None of those numbers. The actual amount of energy added to our atmosphere because of the effects of human-caused changes in its chemistry is four. Four Hiroshimas per second.

The Hiroshima Widget

There is now a widget you can put on your blog, or if you like, use as a Facebook or iPhone app, that demonstrates the addition of energy into our atmosphere in terms of Hiroshima’s. From the creators of the widget:

HiroshimaWidget

Our climate is absorbing a lot of heat. When scientists add up all of the heat warming the oceans, land, and atmosphere and melting the ice, they find our climate is accumulating 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs worth of heat every second.

This warming is due to more heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The burning of fossil fuels means we are emitting billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. This is the main contributor to global warming.

To communicate the sheer amount of heat our planet is accumulating, we have created this widget, embeddable on blogs and also available as a Facebook app, an iPad app, and an iPhone app. To help get the word out on just how much global warming our planet is experiencing, add the widget to your own blog or use the widget on Facebook, like it and share it.

To get the iPhone or iPad app, visit this site on your device and use the big “Get…” button to get instructions. The app is not available through the Apple App Store.

You can get your own copy of the widget HERE.

You can find out more about it HERE.


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Founder Of Competitive Enterprise Institute Must Have Been Drunk

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Hopefully he was drunk, because if he wasn’t, he might be a bit of a moron. This is the Competitive Enterprise Internet (as it looks on the Intertoobs):


This is Fred, the founder, encountering a justifiably annoyed bikeist in Washington DC.

This is a blog post giving more details.

Also, Peter Sinclair at Climate Crocks has this.


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You’re a Wizard Stamp, Harry Potter

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The Harry Potter Stamp

The US Postal Service has issued stamps depicting people who are not American many times. The US Postal Service has issues stamps with people who are not real. So far, though, no wizards have been venerated in this place of honor to my knowledge. This makes me wonder why the former head stamp collector at the American Philatelic Society complained that “Harry Potter is not American. It’s foreign, and it’s so blatantly commercial it’s off the charts.”

Clearly, the Dark Lord who shall not be named is behind this.

You can get your harry potter stamps here.

Here’s the description from the USPS:

The Harry Potter films brought J.K. Rowling’s magical world to the screen, giving physical shape to the characters, creatures, and places that had lived in readers’ imaginations since publication of the first book. The U.S. Postal Service celebrates that magic with a 20-stamp souvenir booklet featuring stills from the award-winning Warner Bros. movies.

The folded booklet has five pages. The front cover features the title Harry Potter, with an image of Harry playing Quidditch, the beloved wizarding sport. The back cover has a picture of a young Harry in class, taking notes with his quill; the title Harry Potter is centered under the picture. When the booklet is opened, an illustration of Hogwarts covers two pages on the back, and selvage text appears on the last page. Inside there are five groupings of four stamps, each grouping set on its own page. Each set of four stamps, featuring stills from the Warner Bros. movies, surrounds the red wax seal of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Harry Potter’s story begins when he receives a letter and a visitor that change his life. He learns that he is the orphaned son of two wizards and possesses unique magical powers of his own. Invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry embarks on an adventure he never could have imagined.

The stamps capture the magic of Harry’s world, with photographs of a few of the brave heroes, fearsome villains, and extraordinary creatures that he encounters throughout his adventures.

Best friends since first meeting on the Hogwarts Express, Harry, Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger face new challenges each year they attend Hogwarts. The first set of stamps shows the friends in action.

The second stamp set includes photos of four of the amazing creatures that will one day come to Harry’s aid-Hedwig, Harry’s pet owl; Fawkes the phoenix; Dobby the house-elf; and Buckbeak the Hippogriff.

At Hogwarts, the friends receive support and guidance from many of their professors, among them the four depicted on the third set of stamps-Rubeus Hagrid, Professor Minerva McGonagall, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, and Professor Severus Snape.

Their fellow students-including Fred and George Weasley, Luna Lovegood, and Ginny Weasley, featured on the fourth group of stamps-fight bravely alongside Harry, Hermione, and Ron in the Battle of Hogwarts.

Harry and friends encounter frightening villains, none more terrifying than Lord Voldemort, considered to be the most evil wizard of all time. He is featured alongside two of his fanatic followers-the sinister Bellatrix Lestrange and devious Draco Malfoy-on the fifth set of stamps, which also includes a photo of Harry during his final, epic battle with Voldemort.

The art directors for the Harry Potter Stamp Collection were William J. Gicker and Greg Breeding. Breeding designed the souvenir booklet using images from the Warner Bros. Harry Potter movies.

The Harry Potter stamps are being issued as Forever® stamps. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail® one-ounce rate.

Made in the USA.

Philatelo!


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Petition asking Google to stop funding Science Denialist Alec

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From Forecast the Facts:

Google’s motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” but it has recently been revealed that Google is secretly funding one of the worst climate-denier groups in the world: the fossil-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, which argues that global warming is good for America and fights to kill renewable energy standards. Google has been a corporate leader in fighting climate pollution. Its support for liars like ALEC is a glaring mistake.

ALEC denies global warming is causing glaciers to retreat or sea level to rise. They’ve even argued “substantial global warming is likely to be of benefit to the United States.”

Google chairman Eric Schmidt has said: “You can lie about the effects of climate change, but eventually you’ll be seen as a liar.”

Since Susan Molinari took over Google’s lobbying operations, the company has financed top members of the climate-denial machine, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), and now ALEC. Tell Google: live up to your corporate values and don’t fund evil.

Here’s the petition.


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Why I Don’t Edit Wikipedia

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Every now and then I find a mistake in Wikipedia. Often, I note the mistake on one of my blogs or, more often, on my facebook page. Usually, somebody fixes it. But also, usually somebody tells me that I should just go and fix it because I can easily do that because Wikipedia is the people’s encyclopedia and everybody can fix it.

I don’t do that, and here’s why. There are actually three reasons. The first and least important reason is that making a change in Wikipedia is part of a community process in which the change I make may be unmade by someone else, or challenged. There’s nothing wrong with that … that process is how Wikipedia manages to get to a point where the articles (depending on the article) are reasonably accurate and useful. The problem is, I can’t tell in advance what that process is going to entail. I may make a change and it gets revised to be better. That’s good. But I also might make a change and find myself in the middle of a pre-existing fight (or a fight that emerges simply because I made the change) that I wasn’t planning on getting involved in, and once I’ve gotten involved in it … especially in the case where my change caused the fight … I’d have the responsibility to continue engagement. There would be a risk that a change I’d make would lead ultimately to a change I would be very much against if I don’t maintain my involvement. I don’t want to do that because I’m already engaged in more fights than I want to be engaged in.

Second, as a writer I like to write my own tuff. Other people can certainly critique or comment on the things I write (especially if it is on a blog where they can comment) but it is still my writing. I am perfectly happy with collaborative writing, and I’ve done plenty of that, but I don’t consider any involvement I’d have in Wikipedia collaborative unless I more fully engaged in it and became part of some sub-community maintaining certain pages. Again, I chose to not expend my energy in that particular area.

Third, although it seems to be easy to get involved in Wikipedia page writing, editing, and maintenance, I don’t think it is all that easy. The people who do it make it look easy, and I very much appreciate their efforts. But for me to assume that I can engage in this activity without learning to become effective, and backing up my inputs with a longer term commitment, is hubris. I’d be very happy to help any Wikipedia contributor working in an area where I have some expertise or knowledge by providing information I have at my fingertips. But, I think engagement in Wikipedia is a responsibility that involves some skill and knowledge and a longer term commitment which I’m not interested in doing at this time.

There is a fourth and less specific and less well articulated reason that I should mention. I think Wikipedia is great, but it also has the potential for messing up the information that is available on a certain topic. Since it is collaborative and often does not include the perspective of experienced experts on a topic, it can become too homogeneous and even in its treatment of sources. Here’s an example. If you try to find out in Wikipedia what the proper divisions of the geography of Africa are (what countries should be included in terms like “West Africa”, “Central Africa”, “East Africa” etc.) you’ll find, I think, something that you’ll never or only rarely see in an actual course, or module in a course, on the divisions of the continent, or in a standard textbook. This is, I think, because there are multiple government agencies or NGO’s, such as the US CIA, various units of the UN, and so on, that have taken the more traditional ways of dividing the continent and revised them significantly for their own purposes. These particularistic paradigms of division address institute-specific issues like which languages are spoken, where an agency has resources, or other large scale economic, political, or cultural issues that are useful for those specific organizations but that conflict with other requirements. The best overall geographical divisions are probably those that include a large number of factors and have a strong link to historical background, and also, that are relatively stable. In other words, there really is probably only ONE way to divide up a continent like Africa, and this way will have problems for every single division (should Rwananda be part of Central or East Africa?) but by having one single method, terms like East Africa, North Africa, etc. will have general utility. Last time I checked Wikipedia on this there was no single best method proposed, and none of the methods discussed were the classic method that I learned in school and that the vast majority of my colleagues in Anthropology and Geography actually use.

Thank you to all the people who actively engage in making Wikipedia so useful. But I’ll need to continue to use my current method: Suggesting changes or pointing out problems now and then, and hoping others with the skills and experience that I don’t have consider addressing those issues.


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The Electric Car/Hybrid Car Lottery

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I would like to propose a lottery.

Cost of ticket: $10.00

Prize: The winner’s choice of an American-made electric car or hybrid car off of an approved list.

The cars would be provided at discount from them manufacturer. The manufacturer benefits from the publicity (free-ish advertising) and from having more of their cars on the road in communities where they might otherwise be very rare.

This would act like a Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA). A ROSCA is a way that a group of people can obtain a costly item with little available cash and low or zero interest loan. Every member of the ROSCA puts a set amount of money into the fund on a periodic basis, and one at a time each ROSCA member gets access to the entire pool, usually in random order.

The lottery would be run as a government project attached to an existing agency that covers the cost of operation so that all of the money acquired through lottery ticket sales goes into the car purchase. The ticket purchasers benefit from the excitement of a lottery produced by the thrill of possibly winning, and occasionally, by actually winning a new car.

The most expensive car out there that fits the criteria for inclusion on the approved list is probably a Tesla, but not everyone will want a Tesla; some people will want a much less expensive hybrid because the hybrid will not be tethered to charging between uses. So, each winner gets to chose the car they prefer, and if less expensive cars are chosen, then more individuals win on each drawing. It would be required that the winner keep possession of the car for one year or more in order for it to be free, which would discourage people from simply re-selling the car. However, if winners do manage to simply pass the car they’ve won on (in order to get the cash) the objective of the lottery is still met. There will be more cars of this type on the road either way.

I suppose this could be done by a state or a collection of states, but also, why not by a commission set up by the Federal Government?


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Why Was Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda So Powerful, and is this a trend?

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I’m sure the measurements are still being checked and adjusted but it is clear that Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda was one of the most powerful tropical cyclones (termed “Typhoon” in the western Pacific) ever recorded. There are several ways to measure how big and bad a tropical cyclone is including it’s overall size from end to end, how low the barometric pressure gets, how high the sustained wind speed is, and how wide that wind field is. In addition, when a typhoon hits land details matter. The front right quadrant of a counter-clockwise spinning typhoon packs the maximum punch and if that part of the storm enters an embayment during high tide the storm surge can be immense. It seems that the storm surge for Haiyan/Yolanda was in the many tens of feet range, and quite possibly will be found responsible for the largest part of the still uncalculated death toll.

But here I want to look at one single factor that almost certainly contributed to the growth of Haiyan/Yolanda into a very powerful storm, a factor that probably doesn’t usually play into a storm’s strength. I refer to an anomaly in sea surface temperatures that was almost certainly caused by global warming, as part of a general warming of the ocean. But first a bit of background on the link between sea surface temperature and hurricanes. This is one of several factors that may be involved in climate change related effects on tropical storm intensity, a situation with which we should be concerned.

Tropical cyclones run on heat, and much of that heat comes from the sea surface. If the surface of the ocean is below a certain temperature, about 82 degrees F, about 28 degrees C, a hurricane or typhoon is very unlikely to form. Above that temperature, if other conditions are right, it may form. Warmer seas can make bigger or stronger storms, and as the storm passes over the ocean, the temperature of the sea surface has a strong influence on whether the storm increases or decreases in strength . As the storm moves over the sea, the interface between the windy storm and the roiling ocean becomes something of a mess, as though the surface of the ocean was in a blender, and there is a lot of exchange of heat across that interface. Also, deeper, cooler water is mixed with warmer surface water. A powerful storm moving across the ocean will leave in its wake a strip of cooler water. This sometimes causes subsequent storms moving along the same path to be weaker or to downgrade in strength more quickly.

This should indicate, one would think, that as sea surface temperatures (SST) have gone up with global warming, there should be more “hurricane” out there on the oceans. It has been hard to make the link between global warming and frequency of hurricanes, however. This may be because of the nature of hurricane formation. Once a hurricane forms in a given spot and gets big, it may reduce the chance of the next hurricane forming. Also, hurricanes are usually born as waves in a very large scale pattern of air masses. The total number of waves that form may not change with global warming, and the hurricane season is only a part of the year, and other factors have to come into play that are also ponderous in their timing to turn a wave into a major storm. An analogy might be this: Imagine that everyone in the working population of a downtown neighborhood becomes hungrier, perhaps because all the companies they work for insist on a two hour high intensity exercise program for everyone to lower their health insurance costs. Will this increase in hunger mean more lunches, snacks, and dinners consumed in the local restaurants? Or will the lunches, snacks, and dinners become larger, with people ordering more food with each sitting? Since there are only so many opportunities to go grab a bite to eat, there will probably be very few additional visits to the local eateries, but more food may well be consumed per event. Increased SST may be like increased hunger. There may not be very many more hurricanes, but among those that occur, some may be much stronger.

There is evidence for this. Kerry Emanuel did a study several years ago that linked sea surface temperatures in the Pacific with an index called PDI, which measures the overall energy involved in typhoon/hurricane activity. (Emanuel, K. (2005). Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years, 436(August), 686–688. doi:10.1038/nature03906.) He came up with this graph:

Emanuel_2005_hurricane_sst_link

The graph shows that hurricanosity, as it were, goes up and down with sea surface temperature more or less. And, SST goes up and down with decadal oscillations like ENSO (El Nino) but with an overall upward trend caused by global warming.

Here’s the new part. If you look at a map of Sea Surface Temperature you are seeing a measurement of, well, the surface of the sea … the top of the water. As a hurricane chugs along on the surface of the sea, turning the top meter or so of ocean into spray and creating a very wavy situation, that heat is certainly directly affecting the storm, but the temperature of the water several meters down also matters. It turns out that sometimes this shallow-deep water (as opposed to deep deep water, way down farther) can be quite warm. When that happens, the dissipation of SST does not occur to the same degree. The leading edge of the hurricane gets a good dose of heat from the surface, but instead of the SST dropping as the top warm water is mixed with somewhat deeper cooler water, the heat supply is not attenuated, or at least not by much, as the massive storm moves along. More of the storm gets more heat, and the storm as a whole gets more heat. And there’s more heat left over for the next storm.

We think this happened with Haiyan. Have a look at the following map. It is sea surface temperature anomaly (how much more or less than expected the SST is) for the top 50 meters for the western Pacific at the time of the typhoon. The Philippines is down near the bottom of the map straddling the 10 and 15 degree N lines. (Maps are from here) Notice that the surface is not unusually warm.

PacificSST-top-50-meters-Anomoly

This does not mean that the sea surface was not warm. It was plenty warm as it is this time of year i that part of the ocean, just not warmer than expected. Here is the raw temperature (not anomaly) map so you can see that the tropical ocean is, well, tropically warm:

PacificSST-to-50-meters-TEMP

The purple area along the south is sufficiently warm to form typhoons. The ocean to the east of the Philippines is warm enough to form typhoons, but is there any source of extra heat to form a super typhoon? Have a look at this map. This is the water temperature at depth, here at 100 meters. This is an anomaly map, so its shows if the temperature is more (or less) than expected. Notice that east-west band of red indicating several degrees warmer than it usually is, at depth.

PacificSST-100_meters_ANOMALY

[Updated:] Here’s the same map with Haiyan/Yolanda’s track and history, graphic generated by Jeff Masters.

Haiyan_Path

So, it would appear that Haiyan/Yolanda passed over the usual very warm waters that allow the formation of typhoons, but also, over water that was warm at depth so as the top of the sea is churned up by the growing storm, there would be extra heat to feed that storm.

One final map. This is the actual temperature (not anomaly) at the 100 meter level. Notice the purple area.

Pacific_sst_100m_TEMP

At 100 meters depth, the sea was warm enough to form a typhoon. That, dear reader, is extreme.

The same thing happened with Katrina. According to a report from NOAA:

A number of factors contributed to making Katrina a strong Category 5 hurricane…Sea surface temperatures (SST) in the Gulf of Mexico were one to two degrees Celsius above normal …, and the warm temperatures extended to a considerable depth through the upper ocean layer. Also, Katrina
crossed the “loop current” (belt of even warmer water), during which time explosive
intensification occurred. The temperature of the ocean surface is a critical element in the
formation and strength of hurricanes.

We know that the ocean is absorbing a lot of the extra heat caused by global warming. Well, this is some of that heat, causing megastorms.

I’ve noticed that climate science denialists are very adamant about two things: Denying the importance of major storms like Haiyan, and denying the fact that heat is going into the oceans. Perhaps they see the link, and are frightened that people will believe that anthropogenic changes to our climate can kill thousands of people at a time, in a few hours, through the mechanism of anomalously high temperature at modest depth below the surface of the already tepid tropical sea.

It is time for action.


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Church Resembles Human Male Sex Organ. Beavis and Butt-Head Convert.

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I think it was Johan Huizinga, who noted so many things about the Middle Ages, who noted that more than one Christian architect, captured by muslims during the crusades, was put to death for insolence after put to service to design a mosque and making it appear as a holy cross from the sky. If I recall correctly (and this was all before the Internet so nobody is going to check) the idea was this: If you build a church the way your daddy, the architect before you in your lineage of architects, built it, you don’t necessarily think of why you are doing what you are doing. Way back in the early days of churchy architecture, they started building churches to be in the shape of a cross (this is commonly known fact). This tradition was passed on and the details forgotten; churches kept being built like crosses but many of the builders didn’t really notice what they were doing. These captured individuals pressed into service to design and supervise the construction of the temple of a different religion appeared to be thumbing their noses at their islamic overlords, when really, they were just trying to get by without being noticed.

But then, hundreds of years later, an architect, for some reason or another, designed a Christian Science church to look like a dick from outer space.

One thing that is funny about this is the simple fact that you can’t possibly design a church that looks like a human phallus from the sky and not know it. This is what architects do. They design things that look a certain way from the sky. Or at least, several gazillion times, and for the vast majority of time they spend on a given project, they have in view, look at, show off to others, and dare I say, generally fiddle with the view of the building they are designing from above.

Hehe_hesaidpenisHave you ever been to an architect’s office? Have you ever been to an architect’s office that did not have current and past designs hanging everywhere like laundry?

Also note, a key motto used by the Christian Science church is “Rise Up.”

Also note, this is the Dixon Christian Science church. Enter Beavis and Butt-head stage left. Thank you very much.

The Dixon Christian Science Church has a sense of humor. It has fixed the view of their church from space using an age-old technique invented around the same time those Christian archetects were getting beheaded in Jerusalem by stodgy old fuddy duddies in Europe. They did this:

539643_274762142648692_1716868699_n


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