Bikes are great and all, but as more people start cycling instead of driving, it doesn't necessarily make sense to create new slabs of empty asphalt on which to park bikes. A better solution is Japan's Eco Cycle Anti-Seismic Underground Bicycle Park. Instead of paving large swaths of the ground, it stores your ride vertically underneath it.

The bicycle park is just about 23 feet wide, Inhabitat says, but it can hold 144 bikes on a magic underground spiral. It works automatically, too.

Watch it in action, as bikes are “sucked into these machines and drawn deep into the depths of the earth.” The key action is around 1:30:

It might be rainy. It might be muddy. You might speed through a disgusting puddle on your bike. But if you took a few seconds to slap on a Musguard fender, you and your clothes will be protected from the tell-tale tracks of biking in the rain.

Made of recycled polypropylene plastic, designed by Niko Klansek, this little invention is beautifully simple. Wired reports:

The Musguard fender is a 35 gram strip of polypropylene plastic that has been designed to wrap snugly around a bike’s tubular frame and easily transform into a rigid, backsplash-blocking fender if storm clouds gather. The design is minimal, elegant, and to cap off its impressive list of hipster bona fides, the Musguard fender is made from recycled plastic and manufactured in Europe.

It’s super-easy to install and remove, too -- unroll, crease, strap on, voila.

This is the Onion Ditch Bridge in Logan County, Ohio.

It's made of 100 percent recycled materials -- detergent and shampoo bottles, car bumpers, dashboards. In fact, it's the longest recycled bridge in the country. OK, it’s still not very long -- only 24.6 feet. But it's sturdy! And it’s 80 percent post-consumer waste!

Inhabitat:

Impervious to insect infestations and exceptionally durable, the 100 percent recycled bridge is made of materials that will not absorb moisture or rot. The anticipated 50 year life span combined with the earth-friendly materials contributed to the county’s decision to contract AXION, according to engineer Scott Coleman, who added that the county has plans to achieve zero waste by 2020.

This technology has been around for decades, but it's only now that it's been used to its fullest extent.

Mother Nature Network has a somewhat appalling post title: “No, we can't burn people for electricity.” Wait. Was someone suggesting that? WHO WANTS TO SET PEOPLE ON FIRE? Oh. Dead people. Well, that's a little more ... NO. Don't burn dead people!

Passing the mic to Mother Nature Network:

The concept of using humans as an alternative energy source serves as a plot point in the novel "Agenda 21" by conservative commentator Glenn Beck, but the notion is fiction. The human body is about 65 percent water and it requires a tremendous amount of heat to vaporize the water and get the corpse burning.

Oh. Glenn Beck. OK then.

The giant oarfish is the very shy Michael Fassbender of the sea -- rarely seen, reportedly HUGE, and the stuff of legend. But we’re in luck, because marine researchers, those underwater paparazzi, basically have a giant oarfish sex tape. And not just one, but five of them.

Researchers with the conveniently named SERPENT (really?!) used remote operated vehicles to take underwater footage of giant oarfish in the northern Gulf of Mexico. And what did they find? The jokes write themselves:

The director of the Big Sur Spirit Garden, Jayson Fann likes to make people feel at home. He's a nester. Literally -- he makes giant, human-sized nests for people to hang out and sleep in and eat in and LIVE IN FOREVER AND NEVER LEAVE (but maybe that’s just us).

These "spirits nests" are often made out of Eucalyptus wood. Fann harvests it himself, he says, with the help of a few assistants. Two truckloads of branches might make one nest. He twists and screws the branches together in his workshop.

By the end, they're so heavy that they need to be installed with a crane.

On Sunday, the World Naked Bike Ride sent nude cyclists tearing through the streets of cities worldwide. They were bike-loving, pants-free, and united in their support of ... a cause of some sort. Rather understandably for people surrounded by that much T&A&P, they seemed a bit distracted about what exactly that cause was.

The problem with us "tree-huggers" is supposed to be that we care about plants more than humans. But people who think “tree-hugger” is an insult fail to realize that tree-huggers are just as self-interested as anyone else. You think we hug trees for the fun of it? Trees are like the least cuddly thing around! We just happen to realize that humans will be better off if we can look after other creatures too -- especially trees, which make us richer and smarter and, it turns out, may make us live longer too.

Treehugger (appropriately) writes about a study showing that killing trees is actually quite bad for humans:

A team from the U.S. Forest Service, led by Geoffrey Donovan, set out to see what effect the loss of all these trees was having, if any, on human health. ... After adjusting their findings for demographic variables, like income and education, the team discovered a startling association: fewer trees aligned with more human deaths.

Correlation, as always, isn't causation, but there’s reason to believe that killing trees really does lower overall health.

The Political Economy Research Institute published this list of greenhouse gas emitters. It's based on the 2011 data from the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. The three top polluters on the list are power companies -- American Electric Power, Duke Energy Corp., and Southern Co.

The fourth is the U.S. government, responsible for more than 1 entire percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions.

Part of the reason the government ranks so high is that it's also a power company. Top on the list of its polluting properties is the TVA's Paradise Fossil plant, a coal-fired power plant. And the government is trying to clean up its act, it really is:

“Only with the sperm of your species’ strongest creature,” Morpheus intoned to Neo, “do you have any hope of survival.”
--The Matrix, except starring bees

I think we’re all familiar with colony collapse disorder (CCD) here -- bees be dyin’, trouble be brewin’, etc., to use the scientific terms. (But seriously, bees pollinate a ton of our food, and their unexplained, massive die-offs are ominous and straight out of The X-Files.) So it’s cool that Washington State University researchers are trying to create The One in bee form, the super-bee that can survive CCD. It’s even cooler that they’re creating a bee sperm bank to do so, because sperm is one of our favorite topics:

[I]n an effort to find and utilize the needed genes, the USDA granted WSU a permit in 2008 to import honey bee semen for breeding purposes, subject to strict screening for viruses.

Taking only from the best, the scientists collected semen from Italian bees who are known to reproduce quickly and in order to create a bee resilient to the cold.