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Mathmos Glowing Wind Lights Probably Best For Breezier Locales
Posted by Kit Eaton at 8:01 PM on November 13, 2008
Mathmos' eight-inch tall windlights are pretty simple—just a generator, 2.4-inch propeller and two LED lights—but that doesn't stop them from having their own cute, glowing eco-charm. Basically when the wind blows strongly enough, they light up: dot them about your garden and you'd have a great display, but only if the wind is blowing. If you're in London, Jason Bruges Studio has arranged hundreds of them into a 45-foot high Aeolian Tower scultpure at the Southbank which is showing until November 16th. But if you want just one, it'll cost you around $US18. [Technabob]
The Gadget: Monster's Turbine "In-Ear Speakers", their first ear buds and followup to the 
We don't know how much it cost her, but word is that the Queen of England has put down some mega-bucks to buy the world's largest wind turbine. The 10-megawatt monster machine built by Clipper Windpower of Carpinteria, California will have a wingspan larger than two soccer fields and will stand 574 feet tall when completed. The windmill is expected to displace two million barrels of oil as well as 724,000 tons of CO2 over its lifetime. It will also serve as the flagship for Clipper's Britannia Project, an effort to produce massive new turbines on deep-sea floating platforms. If all goes as planned, the Queen's windmill will light up thousands of British homes starting in 2012. [
On the list of ways to go, having your lungs explode is definitely on the gnarlier side. Too bad for bats in treehugging locales, though, because that's 
It's one thing to tinker in your garage to restore that old gas-guzzling muscle car that you think will get you some action. It's something entirely different to invent an electricity-generating wind turbine out of scrap parts that could revolutionise personal power in developing nations, especially if you're in college. Max Robinson has done just that, designing a turbine out of spare parts that costs less than US$40 to build out of readily available parts and can power a home's lighting for up to two and a half days or a radio for over a day. No word on how long an OLPC would last. [
An Israeli company, Aespironics, is trying a new approach in re-designing an old faithful drug delivery system: the inhaler. They've teamed up with an expert in drug atomisation and a wind turbine researcher, and have come up with a breath-activated, turbine-assisted design that should be slim, cheap and easy to produce, and deliver dry drugs to the users lungs without leaving them sticking inside the mouth. Sounds amazing doesn't it? Particularly when you consider the implications of a simple, compact and cheap dispenser for aiding ill people in the developing world. The team is planning tests for the year end, and thinks a product could be on the market within three years. If it's an inhaler slim enough to fit in a wallet, I'll take one soon, please: lugging around a conventional one is annoying. [
(Photo by Steve Morse)
The idea of diving out of an aeroplane with essentially just a thin envelope of fabric protecting me from splattering my organs all over concrete like postmodern art makes me want to pee myself. Yet somehow jumping off a giant, bird-blending propeller blade, almost thirty stories up, makes me want to poop myself too. And that's exactly what these insane base jumpers do, on video no less.
However exciting the 
