These type of products look amazing.  Welcome to the world of personal power generation.

I find them interesting not only because of the lack of batteries, but also because of the Do It Yourself aspect.  Like "personal publishing", if these type of products are done right, it's another area of life that - easily - comes under one's personal control.

I'm seeing Hurrican Rita bear down on Texas, and it reminds me of a lot of the energy and resource questions that are looming over modern civilization and how we power ourselves AS a civilization.

An article from Technology Review, presenting some of the apocalyptic views of James Howard Kunstler, proprietor over at Clusterfuck Nation.

This review article is pretty balanced, giving seriousness to the views of Kunstler, without - in the end - buying it.  For those concerned about Peak Oil, give it a read.

Also, a good article by the science writer Darksyde over at DailyKos, that is more topical, on how oil rigs around the ports of Texas and Louisiana work.

Vomitting Confetti has been talking about this topic a bit as well recently.

Anyone else have some thoughts on this?

Great news to hear, heading into the weekend - this article says Global Warming Past the Point of No Return.

Lovely.

It's all about the sea ice - and how the sea ice is disappearing rapidly.

"Sea ice keeps a cap on frigid water, keeping it cold and protecting it from heating up. Losing the sea ice of the Arctic is likely to have major repercussions for the climate, he said. "There could be dramatic changes to the climate of the northern region due to the creation of a vast expanse of open water where there was once effectively land," Professor Wadhams said. "You're essentially changing land into ocean and the creation of a huge area of open ocean where there was once land will have a very big impact on other climate parameters," he said."

That doesn't sound good. 
"The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a "tipping point" beyond which nothing can reverse the continual loss of sea ice and with it the massive land glaciers of Greenland, which will raise sea levels dramatically."

Hmm.

As I live on a city surrounding on three sides by water, I will be paying attention to these things...