AIG joins the list of cratering financial institutions, after losing half its stock value in 5 days. There’s getting to be quite a passel of them, aren’t there? Washington Mutual, Wachovia, and Merrill are on the sick list too while Lehman Brothers will undoubtedly cease to exist in its current form within the very near future.

For The Fed and Treasury, it must feel like whack-a-mole. I mean, they shot Bear Stearns in the head, propped up the corpse of IndyMac, are attempting to get Fannie and Freddie off life support - but then in through the door uninvited shamble several more financial zombies.

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“This is a Category 5 hurricane,” said Jeff Masters, co-founder of meteorological Web site The Weather Underground. “I don’t care what the Category 2 rating says.”

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http://twitter.com/hurricaneike

“A volunteer team of meteorologists and journalists are live tweeting throughout the Hurricane. Not a bot.” Via Digg.

You can also “track #Ike” on Twitter to get tweets from whoever is using that tag.

Both will have near-instantaneous news, as tweets can come from cell phones as well as computers.

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FEMA says it could be “catastrophic, let me repeat that, catastrophic.”

The Houston Chronicle has live video, breaking coverage, and photos. Areas of Galveston are already underwater.

Let’s hope this is not another “Isaac’s Storm“, which devastated Galveston in 1900.

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This old technology, pulling moisture out of the air, has been updated. Atmospheric water generators can now purify the resulting water, and this could provide major benefit to areas where drinking water is not readily available. They can run on renewable power like solar and wind too.

Added bonus: Willie Nelson has partnered with Wataire, one of the companies developing this new technology.

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Washington Mutual, that’s who.

Hey, I’m thinking Treasury Secretary Hank “The Hammer” Paulson is probably wondering when the Hell he will get a weekend off. He bailed out Fannie and Freddie, the Toxic Twins, last weekend. This weekend he’ll be busy, busy, busy trying to find a buyer for Lehman before their debt gets downgraded and stress fractures appear on financial edifices worldwide. I’m guessing he’s already penciled in the weekend after that to preserve whatever smoldering ruins remain from what once was Washington Mutual.

Socialists spend considerable time theorizing about crises of capitalism. Well, no need for more speculation, because we’re in one right now. Problem is, such crises tend to hose down everyone rather than just raining righteous retribution on evildoer capitalists (who often have a way of escaping relatively unscathed anyway, if they don’t actually eventually profit from the whole thing.) No, it’s those with less money and resources that get whacked worse by such crises. But you knew that.

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From Solve Climate

Co-generation takes energy that is wasted or dissipated by heavy industry and uses it to generate power.

We think we could make about 19 to 20 percent of U.S. electricity with heat that is currently thrown away by industry.

Tom Casten, chairman, Recycled Energy Development

One major barrier to widespread adoption of co-generation is the same as that facing home solar. It’s difficult and sometimes impossible to sell the power back into the grid. But imagine the savings, both in dollars and greenhouses gases, if all that wasted energy was turned into electricity.

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