Earlier I submitted an entry about an underwear thief in Japan amassing a collection of 4,000 items. That’s the creepy kind of theft. This one is more of the “ordinary, decent” kind of theft from Victoria’s Secret where 3 thieves made off with $12,000 worth of under garments during a shop lifting spree.



I almost termed this a high-tech theft due to the security tag defeating containers, but the theives were dumb enough to get caught on surveillance cameras, so that takes care of that. It’s only a matter of time before they’re caught.


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I announced that the energy content normally posted on this site has a new home at Montara Energy Ventures last week. However, as a community service, I’m going to periodically post a digest here that summarizes the content posted on the MeV site. As a reminder, you can easily subscribe to content on the MeV site as well as the content from this site, Musings from the Coast.

• Fuel Efficient Air Travel
• Carbon Sequestration of Coal Emissions
• Cleantech 2007 Conference
• Solar, Thermal that is
• Geothermal research budget slashed
• Solar Cube Appliance
• Enel Acquires AMP Resources
• US Geothermal awarded power purchase agreement
• US Military leads the charge

As you can see, we haven’t been sitting on our hands over on MeV, we’ve actually increased the total content published and hopefully have at least maintained, if not improved, the content quality. Hope you’ll continue to drop by and visit.


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To each their own, but this one cracks me up. Don’t want to go to {work, school, etc} – then visit MyExcusedAbsence.com! For a mere $24.95, you get access to 5 excuse form letters covering doctor visits, deaths, jury duty, emergency room visits, and medical evaluations.

Ethical? No. Funny? Yes. Presumably, someone is actually buying and, I’d guess, using these excuse letters.


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Last night a “budget rocket” reached space from Space Exploration Technologies founded by former Paypal star Elon Musk. This was the second attempt to reach space by the company, an earlier launch attempt was foiled by a corroded aluminium nut in the piping systems. The Falcon booster series is targeted to cost 1/5th the amount of competitors, and is slated to reach a launch cost of $1,000 per kilogram in 2010.


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This is a quick hit type entry with a few land related subjects.

In the Grand Canyon, a glass and steel structure now allows visitors to walk over the edge of the canyon and look 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) straight down. It does seem a little misplaced in the wilderness, but what an opportunity to see that view. The Hualapi Tribe has commissioned this as a joint venture with a Las Vegas developer. See the photo below to get a sense of the structure.



Anderson, Alaska hopes to get people to move to the remote interior town of 300 people by giving away land. There were 26 lots that 44 parties applied for in the area with winter temperatures as low as -60F (-51C.) The only string attached is that the winning parties must build at least a 1,000 square foot (92 square meter) dwelling on the lot within two years.

Genshiro Kawamoto, a 74 year old billionaire, has decided to rent 4 homes on exclusive Kahala Ave on the island of Oahu to deserving low-income families for $150-200 per month. In total, Kawamoto has 22 properties in the area and plans to have 9 homes occupied in this manner by April. See the map below for location information.



All in all, an interesting day in the land world.


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