This is a handy tool with an unique user interface. Very good for browsing huge numbers of photos, check it out.

The energy content normally posted on this site has a new home at Montara Energy Ventures. As a community service, I will periodically publish a digest that summarizes the content posted on the MeV site. You can easily subscribe to content on the MeV site as well as the content from this site, Musings from the Coast.

• Raft River closer to Reality
• Wind doesn’t have to visually pollute
• Community meets Conservation
• Calpine up 15%, clears acquisition barriers
• Another pretty turbine
• Zero Carbon House
• Renewable energy videos, another medium for the message
• Visual approach to conservation
• 8 more leases for Raser
• Re:Volt – An Energy Challenge
• Ormat expected to miss

If you’re interested in topics like these, make sure you subscribe to the Renewable Energy Journal, it’s free.

Now this is something you don’t see every day, a B-17 heavy bomber making a landing at your local airport. This aircraft along with cars, trucks, tractors, steam engines, and helicopters visited the coast over the weekend for the annual Dream Machines rally. As happens on the coast, it was overcast, but it was fun.

The B-17 is called “Sentimental Journey” and is based in Arizona with the Commemorative Airforce. An aside, just one of these things is hugely noisy, I can’t imagine what it would have sounded like 60+ years ago for 1,000 airplane raids…

Scientists have had a string of remarkable successes lately, taking signals from the brains of monkeys and men, and using them to move mechanical arms.

Darpa, the Pentagon’s blue-sky research division, now wants to ratchet that work up about ten notches, by developing a “neurally controlled artificial limb that will restore full motor and sensory capability to upper extremity amputee patients. This revolutionary prosthesis will be controlled, feel, look and perform like the native limb.”

So, basically, what Luke Skywalker gets in Empire Strikes Back, after Darth chops off his hand. Except, researchers won’t have a long, long time to get this limb ready. Darpa wants the robo-arm stat — in four years or less.

Read more…

This is merely one of the hundreds of interesting mailboxes displayed at Sam’s Mailbox Pictures. If you’re into weird collections, this is a good place to visit…