Are you ready...

...for the future because it is already here and for a mere $250,000 you can strap on a pack and be Rocketman or Rocketgal. Nothing like a few hundred thousand dollars stashed in petty cash in the bureau drawer, huh?

Russia has decided to put their mark on the landscape with a jeweled diamond tower that will reportedly dominate the landscape and use the sun's light to illuminate the structure with faceted panels. I have to say the artist's renderings are beautiful and I would not mind living near this solar tower. I also like the idea of using solar energy in a more innovative and useful way.

If only the short-sighted people who live in the plains states, and anywhere there is sufficient wind rippling vast fields of grain and grass, would reconsider their position on wind power. I agree that a field of beautiful wind turbines is vastly superior to the current method of generating electricity with smoke stacks belching black (or even white) clouds of smoke or the smell of a trash burning power plant like the fiscal disaster that dominated the south side of Columbus, Ohio. It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time but fell far short of everyone's expectations, especially those people down wind of it. The south side always had an interestingly fetid odor when the wind was just right and the sewer ripened to fetid perfection, but the power plant added something more--a stench thick enough to chew.

The future is indeed here and it's time to focus on making it sustainable for generations to come, even if you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed to take your turn with a small rocket engine strapped to your back.

That is all. Disperse.