The one shown here, it’s presumed, is just a Photoshop mockup.

From 3 megawatt offshore monsters to zero energy windmill skyscrapers, kite flown turbines and giant seabed anchored super-turbines, held aloft by blimps. Here is our list of the most futuristic and quixotic designs for wind turbines. By far the most beautiful way to harness energy.

• The U.S. will spend $230 million on health care in the next hour.
• One in six Americans goes without health insurance (around 47 • According to the National Academy of Sciences, lack of health insurance results in lost economic value equal to $178 million to $356 million every day, due to the poorer health and earlier deaths of the uninsured.
• The U.S. ranks #24 among the 30 most affluent countries in life expectancy – yet spends more on health care than any other nation.
• The U.S. infant mortality rate is on par with that of Croatia, Cuba, Estonia, and Poland; if the U.S. infant mortality rate were the same as that of top-ranked Sweden, 21,000 more American babies would live to celebrate their first birthdays every year.

• A baby born in Washington, D.C. is almost two-and-a-half times more likely to die before age one than a baby born in Vermont. African American babies are more than twice as likely to die before age one than either white or Latino babies.
• Changes in behavior and the physical and social environment can help avoid about 70 percent of premature deaths.
• Insured adults under sixty-five are 50 percent more likely to have had cancer screenings than the uninsured; early detection saves lives and dramatically lowers treatment costs.
• Premature death by homicide is more than five times higher in the U.S. than the OECD average; 68 percent of U.S. homicides in 2006 were committed with a firearm.
• Nearly a third of all female murder victims were killed by intimate partners (husbands and boyfriends).
• More than one million Americans are living with HIV.
• One American dies every 90 seconds from obesity-related health problems.
• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, children living in central cities are less likely to play outside than other children; in central cities, 48 percent of Latino children and 39 percent of African American children were kept inside because of parental perceptions of neighborhood danger. Inactivity is considered a major factor in obesity among 66 million young people.
• African American children are two-and-a-half times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma than white children – and five times more likely to die of asthma.
• Suicide is the eleventh-leading cause of death in the U.S. overall, and the third-leading cause of death among children and adolescents. More than 90 percent of those who die by suicide have had mental or substance-abuse disorders.
• One in seventeen Americans (about 6 percent of the population) suffers from severe mental illness.
• More than half of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are related to an inability to pay for illness or injury.

Summary:
Ethanol remains a major consumer of corn, and while it is supporting corn at current prices, it is those prices that jeopardize the profitability of ethanol plants. Ethanol profitability is a function of corn prices, the value added by its livestock feed co-products, as well as the price of gasoline which gives buoyancy to ethanol prices. When production costs rise faster than the value of ethanol and the distillers’ grains, then profitability of plants diminish and production is curtailed. Volatility is the future of ethanol profitability.

Jon Stewart explains why the infamous New Yorker cover is funny.

There are a couple of NYC restaurants, including Peters Downtown, that offer monthly nude meals. The motto is “No Hot Soup” according to an article in the New York Post:

“We’re not out to shock or put on a public spectacle. We want only to do things that other people do in the way that we are most comfortable doing them. That, for us, is without clothes,” said John Ordover.

I saw this story first in the Guardian and, as always, the comments are where the action is. There’s an interesting photo there, too.

Also this week:

And yes, there’s a lot more to read in this week’s print edition.

I don’t recall ever seeing such small ants before. They must be about the size of the letter “i.” No, even that’s overstating it a little.

…the country faces “a long-term energy crisis” that threatens the security and prosperity of future generations if swift action isn’t taken.

Marine General James Jones, the institute’s president, said the call to action reflects broad, bipartisan views and doesn’t lean on one party or the other.

“There’s an energy tsunami coming, and when you see it coming you better get on top of the wave, or you’re going to get crushed by it,” he said in an interview.