Some 700 years ago, the story goes, a sadistic bailiff called Gessler decided to teach the people living around the many arms of mountain-flanked Lake Lucerne a lesson in obedience.

BBC: The perfect trip: Switzerland

People living here in Palo Alto, Mountain View and the rest of Silicon Valley have been in a shopping frenzy, snapping up potassium iodide pills, dried foods, emergency kits and various other supplies out of concern that Northern California could receive a dose of radiation from the nuclear mess still unfolding in Japan.

FORBES: Radiation No Threat To Silicon Valley, Santa Clara County Says

Russians living in Chelyabinsk, a city in the Ural mountain area of central Russia, woke up to a surprising visitor from outer space Friday morning.

FORBES: Meteor Slams Into Buildings In Russia, Hundreds Injured

Spring Mountain analysts Jason Orchard and Haime Mozes examined the performance of 9, 461 living and defunct hedge funds from 1995 through May of this year and documented a consistent pattern.

FORBES: Bigger Definitely Not Better In Hedge Funds, Report Says

As the late, great economist Julian Simon demonstrated (both with clear economic logic and an unassailable mountain of data), there is a long-run tendency for standards of living to improve and for material scarcity to relax as a constraint rather than tighten.

FORBES: You Worry. You Shouldn't. Part 1: Overpopulation and Resource Exhaustion

Although the landscape can shield people from sound, the report says one respondent living within 1km of a wind farm said the sound echoed off a nearby mountain into the valley where they lived.

BBC: Wind turbine

The kitchen and the adjoining living room afforded Liz a spectacular view of the horizon dominated by Sun Valley's rugged mountain skyline, still aglow at 10:10 p.m.

NPR: Excerpt: 'Killer Weekend'