AUGUST 29, 2012 | BY JAMES K. WHITE

Mullet Over:
Bicycle sharing

Bolivia possesses no outlets to any sea or ocean, so it may surprise some of our readers to learn the nation has a sizeable navy.
Approximately 5,000 military personnel are in Bolivia’s navy and most of those are occupied patrolling on Lake Titicaca.

A recent report indicates that 96 percent of forest fires (world-wide) are started by human beings and not by any natural causes.

In another instance of man-caused waste: There is a huge air-conditioned warehouse in Harrisonburg, Virginia where more than 1,100 computer servers are stored that have a total capacity of 25 million gigabytes. That is enough info space to house the data from 50 Libraries of Congress. These computers sit idly and are expensively housed while ownership litigation continues. By the time that pertinent legal issues are settled, much of the hardware is likely to be damaged and all the units will be technologically antiquated.

The buzz in financial circles has recently been predicting great potential for the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) communities.

However, some savvy commerce professionals claim that there exist tremendous (and largely overlooked) industry potentials in Africa. For instance, Africa contains more than 60 percent of the earth’s uncultivated arable land. Abundant mineral resources are known and many promising regions have not been fully explored. There are 54 countries in Africa that total more than a billion in population.

Bicycle sharing in various large cities has become very popular. New York City has 10,000 bikes in service with 600 stations for pick-up/drop-off. Wuhan, China provides more than 70,000 bikes for its citizenry to share.

Thousands of people in Russia either rent or own dachas. Generally speaking, dachas are summer cottages (with gardens) and are currently much in vogue. The designs of dachas range from primitive to extravagant. Nowadays, the cottages are often sites used by city-dwellers seeking opportunities to escape from the stresses inherent in urban settings. Some come with plans to stay for a week and remain for years.

I found out a few tricks for winning at the game Hangman. A clever 5th grader extended our game by drawing a hat, a necktie and 2 boots – otherwise, I could have won. Okay, Foxworthy, I am not smarter than ...

Well, I leave you with a comment attributed to one of my childhood heroes, Yogi Berra: “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up somewhere else.” Have a great week.

James White is a retired mathematics teacher who enjoys sharing fascinating trivia. He can be reached at [email protected].